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Salmon, Dried or Kippered, to Dress
An excellent relish for breakfast may be made with dried salmon, and it is specially valuable, as it can be used when other fish is not in the market. It may be dressed in two or three ways. No. 1.--Wash the salmon in cold water, wipe it with a soft cloth, and lay it on a hot gridiron over a clear fire. The inside of the fish should be placed to the fire first, and it should be turned over when it is half done. Lay it on a hot dish, butter it well, and serve hot. Or cut it into slices, and heat these through in the oven or before the fire. Serve with mustard sauce. No. 2.--Soak the salmon in water to remove some of the salt. Put the fish in a saucepan, cover with cold water, and let it simmer gently till it is done enough. It must not boil, or the flesh will be hard. Serve with egg sauce. No. 3.--Pull the skin off the salmon, and tear into flakes the thick part of the flesh. Pour boiling water over it, let it stand for three minutes, then drain it, and put it into a saucepan with as much milk as will moisten it. Let it simmer very gently for five or six minutes. Dredge a little flour over it, add a slice of fresh butter, stir the mixture for a few minutes, and serve very hot. If liked, newly-mashed potatoes can be mixed with the flaked salmon just before it is sent to table. No. 4.--Wash a salted salmon, let it lie in water for twenty-four hours, changing the water several times. Scale it, cut it into four parts, put these into a saucepan, cover with cold water, and set them on the fire. When the fish is half done, change the water, and simmer the pieces till they are tender. Drain them, put them into an earthenware dish, sprinkle cayenne, allspice, cloves, and mace over each piece, cover with vinegar, and let them remain for four or five hours. Serve cold for breakfast or tea.
Four treatments for cured salmon, from hard-salted to lightly kippered. The choice of method depends entirely on how salty the fish is, which the original assumes you can judge by taste.
- Know which cure you haveModern hot-smoked or "kippered" salmon is already cooked and only lightly salted, so it needs warming through and nothing more. Heavily salted dried salmon, the fish these methods were written for, is harder to find now; look for salted or dried salmon in Scandinavian and Eastern European shops. If it is board-hard, it needs the long soak of No. 4.
- The hinge: never let it boilThe instruction "it must not boil, or the flesh will be hard" is the one line to obey. Hold the water at 160-175F so it barely trembles; salted fish protein tightens and turns fibrous the moment it reaches a rolling boil.
- Soaking timesTwenty-four hours with several changes of water suits a stiff, board-dry salt fish. For a moderately salted fillet, four to eight hours in the refrigerator is enough. Taste a sliver of the raw flesh after soaking rather than trusting the clock.
- Gridiron over a clear fireA "clear fire" means coals with no flame or smoke. A ridged cast-iron grill pan over medium-high heat, or a broiler element at full heat with the fish about four inches below, gives the same result. The book puts the inside — the cut flesh side of the split fish — to the heat first, turning it when half done.
- Reheating in the ovenNo. 1 says only to heat slices "in the oven or before the fire," with no temperature given; a low oven, around 300F for eight to ten minutes, covered, suits it. Higher heat dries cured salmon out fast.
- Egg sauce and mustard sauceBoth were standard Victorian white sauces: a butter-and-flour white sauce with chopped hard-boiled egg folded in, or with a spoonful of made English mustard and a little vinegar. Either can be replaced with a modern hollandaise or a mustard butter.
- No. 4 is a pickle, not a preserveThe cayenne, allspice, cloves, mace and vinegar steep for four or five hours as a flavouring, and the recipe says only to serve the fish cold for breakfast or tea. Keep it covered in the refrigerator and finish it within three days; it is not a shelf-stable pickle.
- Quantities and yieldNo weights are given anywhere. Reckon 4-5 oz of soaked cured salmon per person at breakfast; for No. 3, about a cup of milk to a pound of flaked fish, with the flour and butter used sparingly to bind rather than thicken.
Dried and salted salmon was a working preserve of the northern rivers, made in quantity during the summer runs on the rivers of Scotland and Ireland and shipped inland to be eaten through winter and Lent. The word kipper is often said to have described the process rather than the herring -- to kipper a fish was to split, salt and smoke it -- though the word is also recorded as an old noun for a spawning male salmon, and which sense came first is disputed; in any case kippered salmon was a well-known delicacy long before the kippered herring took over the name. Cassell's recommends it precisely for the reason that mattered in a Victorian household without refrigeration, that it "can be used when other fish is not in the market" -- fresh salmon was seasonal and expensive, while the cured article kept on a shelf. The breakfast context is telling too: the substantial cooked breakfast of grilled or potted fish was a fixture of the middle-class Victorian morning, and salt fish flaked with mashed potato, as in No. 3, is the same impulse that produced fish cakes and kedgeree.