Home › The Principles of Cookery › Salmon Gwilts, or Salmon Peel
Salmon Gwilts, or Salmon Peel
These are the small salmon which run from about five or six to ten pounds. They are very good, and make handsome dishes cooked in the same way as salmon trout, and sent to table crooked in the form of the letter S. SALMON, HERRING, SPRATS, MACKEREL, ETC. ETC., PICKLED (Dr. Kitchener's recipe).
Cut the fish into pieces of a suitable size, do not take off the scales; then make a brine strong enough to bear an egg, in which boil the fish; they must be boiled in only just liquor enough to cover them, and do not overboil them. When the fish are boiled, lay them slantingly to drain off all the liquor; when cold, pack them close in the kits, and fill these up with equal parts of the liquor the fish were boiled in (having first well skimmed it) and the best vinegar; let them rest for a day, fill up again, striking the sides of each kit with a cooper's adze until the kit will receive no more; then head them down as close as possible. This is in the finest condition when fresh. Salmon is most plentiful about midsummer; the season for it is from February to September. Some sprigs of fresh-gathered young fennel are the accompaniments. The three indispensable marks of the goodness of pickled salmon are--First, the brightness of the scales, and their sticking fast to the skin; secondly, the firmness of the flesh; and, thirdly, its fine pale red-rose colour--without these it is not fit to eat, and was either stale before it was pickled, or has been kept too long after. The above was given us as the actual practice of those who pickle it for the London market. Pickled salmon warmed by steam, or in its pickle liquor, is a favourite dish at Newcastle.
The opening lines are a market note on small salmon; the bulk of the entry is Dr Kitchiner's trade method for pickling oily fish in sealed casks. It is a commercial preserving process, not a kitchen one, and it cannot be reproduced safely today.
- Why this one is unsafeCooked fish is packed into a container that is then sealed as tightly as a cooper can drive it — an oxygen-free environment holding a high-protein food at ambient temperature. That is the setting associated with Clostridium botulinum type E, which is specifically linked to fish and may produce no smell, taste or gas to warn you. The salt and vinegar in the method do inhibit spoilage, but neither is measured, so nothing in it can be verified as sufficient.
- The acid is not measuredThe pack liquor is half vinegar and half the fish's own cooking brine, so the finished acidity is unknown. The liquid may well be acid enough; the flesh inside thick pieces may not be, and there is no way to know. Kitchiner had no means of testing it, and neither does a modern cook working from these instructions.
- "Strong enough to bear an egg"The old float test tells you only that the brine is dense enough to buoy an egg, well short of full saturation, and temperature and egg freshness both shift the reading. It is not a control point you can build a preserve on.
- The keeping claim is the giveaway"This is in the finest condition when fresh" and the three tests for goodness — bright adhering scales, firm flesh, pale rose colour — are buyer's checks against fish that was stale before pickling or kept too long after, which the entry says outright. The method assumed the turnover of a commercial trade supplying the London market, not a jar standing in a domestic cupboard.
- If you want pickled salmonUse a current tested recipe from a food-safety authority, which will specify vinegar strength, salt weight, processing temperature and refrigerated storage.
- Salmon gwilts and salmon peelBoth are local names for small salmon, here given as five to ten pounds; the same fish is often called grilse, though the names were not applied consistently from river to river and "peel" elsewhere denotes sea trout. A whole fish of that size is still sold, though now usually farmed salmon rather than a returning wild fish.
- The kit and the cooper's adzeA kit is a small wooden staved cask; the adze is a cooper's cutting tool whose heavy head could also be used to strike the cask, as here, settling the contents so the liquor works down and more can be added. Neither has a modern kitchen equivalent, which is part of why the method does not translate.
- "Crooked in the form of the letter S"A serving convention for whole small fish: the body is bent into an S on the dish rather than laid straight. The entry gives sprigs of fresh young fennel as the accompaniment, the long-standing English pairing for salmon.
The pickling method is credited to Dr William Kitchiner, who held an MD but never practised as a physician, being known as an optician and amateur cook, and whose The Cook's Oracle first appeared in 1817 as Apicius Redivivus. Kitchiner presents it explicitly as trade practice — "the actual practice of those who pickle it for the London market" — which is why it is written in barrels rather than jars: pickled salmon was a bulk commodity moved south in casks, and the three tests for scale, firmness and colour are a buyer's checklist rather than a cook's. The Newcastle habit of warming pickled salmon in its own liquor reflects how ordinary the stuff was in the north-eastern ports that shipped it. Small salmon of this size were long distinguished from full-grown fish by a thicket of local names — peel, gwilt, grilse, botcher — and the terms shifted from river to river, so nineteenth-century sources rarely agree on which weight belongs to which word.