Home › The Principles of Cookery › Salmon, Marinaded
Salmon, Marinaded
No. 1.--Cut three moderate-sized onions in slices, and chop into small pieces a turnip, a carrot, and three or four outer sticks of celery. Add two table-spoonfuls of chopped parsley and two bay-leaves. Put these ingredients into a saucepan, with a slice of fresh butter, and stir briskly over a quick fire for eight or ten minutes. Pour over them a pint of vinegar, and add a dessert-spoonful of salt, a dozen peppercorns, and a blade of mace. Simmer the pickle for a few minutes, and add three pints of water. Put in two or more thick slices of salmon, and boil them gently until done enough. Leave the fish in the marinade till cold, and serve with a little of the pickle (strained) in the dish with it. No. 2.--Cut some slices of salmon an inch and a quarter thick, brush them over with clarified butter, and fry in hot fat till they are lightly browned. Let them get cold, then lay them in an earthen jar. Boil for ten minutes as much vinegar as will cover them, with a sliced onion, one or more bay-leaves, a piece of thin lemon-rind, a sprig of tarragon, and a little salt and whole pepper. Let the marinade cool, and strain it over the salmon. A little oil poured over the top will make the fish keep for some time.
Two methods: a court-bouillon turned sharp with vinegar in which the salmon poaches and cools, and a fried version laid down in a jar of spiced vinegar. Both are cold dishes, and both hinge on letting the fish cool in its own liquid rather than draining it hot.
- Imperial measuresCassell's pint is 20 fl oz, so the pint of vinegar is 2 1/2 US cups and the three pints of water just under 2 quarts. A dessert-spoonful is about 2 teaspoons.
- Use a non-reactive panA pint of vinegar simmered with vegetables will pick up metallic flavours from bare cast iron or aluminium. Stainless steel, enamelled cast iron or a glazed earthenware jar for the second method.
- "Until done enough"Steaks an inch or so thick need roughly 8 to 10 minutes at a bare shiver, not a boil, and should be cooked through rather than left translucent, since both versions are kept and eaten cold. Vinegar firms the flesh quickly, so a rolling boil will shred the outside before the centre sets.
- A quick fireFor the first stage this means high heat: the onion, turnip, carrot and celery should sweat and take a little colour in eight to ten minutes, which is what gives the finished pickle body rather than raw sharpness.
- A blade of maceOne piece of the dried outer casing of nutmeg, not ground mace. If you cannot find blade mace, a pinch of grated nutmeg substitutes for aroma but not for the clean, slightly resinous edge.
- Vinegar strengthThe original assumes malt or wine vinegar at roughly 5 percent acidity. Modern distilled vinegar at the same strength works but is harsher; cider or white wine vinegar sits closer to the intended flavour.
- The oil seal, and keepingThe direction that oil poured over the top "will make the fish keep for some time" belongs to a cold larder and a period without refrigeration. Cooked fish held under oil at room temperature is a textbook anaerobic environment and a genuine botulism risk. Refrigerate both versions, covered, and eat within two or three days; for anything intended to keep longer, use a current tested preserving recipe.
- Yield and servingTwo or three thick steaks feed three to four as a cold first course or lunch dish. Serve with a spoonful or two of the strained marinade, brown bread and butter, and a plain cucumber salad.
Marinading cooked fish in hot spiced vinegar is one of the oldest keeping techniques in European cookery, running from the Mediterranean escabeche through the English "soused" and "pickled" fish of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Salmon was a classic subject in Britain: before rail and ice, Tweed and Tyne salmon was boiled, packed in kegs with vinegar and spice and shipped south, and Newcastle pickled salmon was a recognised article of trade. By the time Cassell's dictionary appeared in the late Victorian period such dishes were as often eaten for their own sake as for keeping, and marinaded salmon appeared on the cold table and the supper buffet; the book gives both a version served straight from its cooling liquor and an older-style one laid down under oil.