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Salmon, Devilled
Mix a spoonful of mustard with two spoonfuls of Lucca oil, one spoonful of essence of anchovy, and a pinch of cayenne. Cut some thin slices of kippered salmon, rub the mixture into them, and lay them on fired toast which has been seasoned rather highly with pepper or cayenne. Put the toast in a hot oven for a few minutes, and serve immediately. If liked, thin biscuits of any kind may be substituted for the toast. They must be soaked in Lucca oil, and toasted till crisp.
A late-Victorian savoury, meant to close a dinner rather than open it. The whole thing takes ten minutes once the paste is mixed, and the only real risk is leaving it in the oven long enough to dry the fish out.
- Lucca oilSimply olive oil from Lucca in Tuscany, which in Victorian Britain was the standard grade of good table oil. Any decent extra-virgin olive oil does the job.
- Essence of anchovyA thin bottled anchovy sauce, sold by Burgess and others and closer to a pourable liquid than a paste. Use anchovy paste thinned with a little water, or a scant teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce with a mashed anchovy fillet.
- Kippered salmonNot kippers, and not the limp cold-smoked side sold as smoked salmon today. Victorian kippered salmon was split, salted and smoked, generally to a firmer, flakier texture than modern smoked salmon; hot-smoked salmon is the closest substitute.
- "Fired toast"Almost certainly a printer's slip for fried toast — bread crisped in butter or oil rather than dry-toasted. It holds the oily devil paste without going soggy.
- SpoonfulsThe proportions are 1 part mustard to 2 parts oil to 1 part anchovy essence, presumably in teaspoons given the amount of fish involved. Mix it, taste it, and adjust the cayenne; the balance matters more than the volume.
- MustardEnglish mustard powder mixed to a paste, or ready-made English mustard. Dijon is milder and will not give the sharpness the dish is built on.
- Oven heat"A hot oven" is usually taken to correspond to somewhere around 425-450F. Two to three minutes is enough to heat the fish through and set the paste; smoked salmon that stays in longer turns dry and stringy.
- YieldThe recipe specifies no quantities at all. As written, the paste would dress enough salmon for a few small toasts, to be served one or two apiece as a savoury course.
Devilling — coating something in mustard, cayenne and a salty sauce, then applying fierce heat — was one of the workhorse techniques of the Victorian kitchen, applied to kidneys, bones of cold roast fowl, biscuits and almost any fish. Its usual home was the savoury, a small, sharp, hot dish served after the sweet at a formal dinner and said by tradition to be intended to settle the palate before the wine; the custom is generally thought of as a British one, and it persisted in clubs and hotel dining well after the Second World War. That Cassell's offers biscuits as an alternative to fried toast is a sign of how the savoury worked in practice: it had to be assembled fast, from what was already in the house. Kippered salmon, salted and smoked to keep, was exactly the sort of standing store-cupboard fish a well-stocked Victorian larder would have on hand.