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Salmon, Fillets of, Stewed
Trim a pound of salmon into neat fillets. Dry these, dip them in flour, partially fry them, and put them on a sieve to drain. Dissolve three ounces of butter in a saucepan. Mix smoothly with this a table-spoonful of flour, and add a tea-spoonful of chopped parsley, half a tea-spoonful of chopped fennel, a pinch of powdered thyme, and a little pepper and salt. Stir the mixture over the fire for four or five minutes, add a glassful of sherry, and put into the sauce the half-fried fillets. Let them simmer gently for ten minutes. Lift the fish out with a slicer, and place it on a hot dish. Let the sauce cool for two minutes, then stir into it the well-beaten yolks of two eggs, next whisk it over the fire for a minute till it thickens, and pour it over the fish. Garnish the dish with fried sippets. Time, altogether, half an hour. Probable cost, 2s. to 2s. 6d. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A Victorian salmon dish that is really two techniques stacked: a herb-butter braise, finished with an egg-yolk liaison. The liaison is where it goes wrong or right.
- Never let the sauce boil after the yolks go inThe yolks are stirred into sauce that has been off the heat two minutes, then whisked over the fire for barely a minute. Take it past a bare simmer and it will scramble into threads rather than thicken. Low heat, constant movement, and pull it as soon as it coats the spoon.
- A glassful of sherryIn Victorian cookery books a wine glass is roughly 2 fl oz and a tumbler considerably more; here about 1/4 cup of dry sherry (fino or amontillado, not cream) is in keeping. It is the only liquid in the pan apart from the butter, so the result is a thick, buttery sauce rather than a pool.
- Timing on the fishTen minutes of simmering after a partial fry will take modern farmed salmon well past firm. Thick fillets from a pound of fish are done in three to five minutes in the barely bubbling sauce; the interior should still be just translucent when you lift it out.
- Fennel means the herbHalf a teaspoon of chopped fennel is the feathery green frond or the young leaf, not the bulb and not the seed. If you only have seed, use a good pinch, crushed, and add it with the flour so it has time to soften.
- The butter-to-flour ratioThree ounces of butter to one tablespoon of flour is not a conventional roux; it will look broken as it cooks and only comes together once the sherry and then the yolks go in. Stirring it over the heat for four or five minutes is there to cook out the raw flour, not to build a paste.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of bread fried in butter or clarified fat until crisp, arranged round the edge of the dish. Cut them thin and fry them last so they are still crackling when the sauce goes over.
- A slicerA fish slice — a broad, thin, flexible turner. Simmered salmon fillets break up on a fork, so use something that supports the whole piece.
- Yield and costThree to four servings as written, which stretches a pound of fish; treat it as a first course or serve with plain boiled potatoes. The 2s. to 2s. 6d. is the book's own estimate for the dish as a whole.
Cassell's belongs to the era when salmon was still landed in commercial quantities from British rivers — the Severn, the Tay, the Tweed — and reached town markets salted or packed in ice, a trade the railways extended through the nineteenth century. That is why a dictionary of cookery can carry dozens of salmon entries at a price an ordinary household might contemplate. The treatment here is thoroughly French in method despite the very English fried sippets: flour the fish, colour it, build a herb butter, moisten with wine, and finish off the heat with egg yolks. That final step is the liaison, a sauce thickening that long predates the roux, and the reason the instruction to let the pan cool for two minutes is not a throwaway. Fennel with salmon is a pairing generally traced to medieval and early modern English kitchens, where the two appear together in fish-day cookery long before either was thought of as classical.