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SALMON, MATELOTE OF (another way)
Take two or three slices of salmon, lay them in a small kettle with a strainer, stew them very gently in a quart of veal gravy and a gill of Harvey's sauce for twenty minutes; lift out the strainer from the fish, pour off the gravy into a stewpan, return the strainer with the fish to keep warm, thicken the gravy with arrowroot, season with pepper and salt, add a quarter of a pint of sherry, a gill of capers, and a dozen of pickled gherkins cut into slices; pour the whole back again over the slices of salmon. Let them simmer five minutes, and serve immediately.
A Victorian braise that treats salmon like a piece of veal. The one thing to change is the cooking time: twenty minutes of stewing plus five more in the sauce will leave modern farmed salmon dry and chalky.
- TimingThick salmon steaks are done at 125-130F at the centre, which takes roughly 6-8 minutes in barely trembling stock. Poach them short, hold them warm off the heat while you finish the sauce, and give them one minute in it rather than five.
- A gillIn this British book a gill is 5 fl oz, so a scant 2/3 cup; the American gill is 4 fl oz, half a cup. Either reading works for the Harvey's sauce and the capers, but note that a full gill of capers is a great deal — start with 1/4 cup drained and taste.
- Harvey's sauceA commercial anchovy-and-soy condiment, sharpened with vinegar and shallot, of the kind sold in Britain from around the turn of the nineteenth century and now effectively gone. Worcestershire sauce is the closest thing still on the shelf; use about half the quantity, as it is more assertive.
- Veal gravyNot gravy in the modern sense but unthickened brown veal stock. A quart of good veal or chicken stock, reduced a little for body, does the job; avoid anything already thickened or heavily salted, since the sauce is reduced and seasoned later.
- Kettle with a strainerA fish kettle fitted with its perforated drainer plate, which lets you lift the fish out whole without breaking it. A wide saucepan with a folded strip of parchment or a flat steamer insert under the fish achieves the same thing.
- ArrowrootSlake it in cold water (about 2 teaspoons per cup of liquid) and whisk into the simmering gravy; it thickens almost at once and gives a clear glossy sauce rather than the cloudiness of flour. It thins again if held at a hard boil, so keep the heat low once thickened.
- The sherryA quarter pint is 5 fl oz. Add it to the gravy and let it simmer a minute or two before the sauce goes back over the fish, or the raw wine will dominate. Dry or medium-dry, not cream sherry.
- YieldTwo or three slices of salmon serve two or three people. The quart of stock is far more than needed as sauce, which is deliberate — the fish poaches in it, and only the reduced, thickened portion is served.
A matelote is properly a boatman's stew — from matelot, sailor — and in France it almost always meant freshwater fish, eel above all, stewed in red or white wine with onions and mushrooms. What Cassell's offers here is the anglicised drawing-room version: sea salmon instead of river eel, veal stock instead of wine as the base, and the sharpness supplied by capers, gherkins and a bottled sauce rather than by the long reduction of a country kitchen. The reliance on Harvey's sauce is very much of its moment; by the 1870s the British larder held a row of proprietary bottles — Harvey's, Reading sauce, mushroom ketchup, Worcestershire — and cookery writers used them as shortcuts to depth of flavour in the same way a modern cook reaches for fish sauce or stock concentrate. The arrowroot thickening, rather than a flour roux, marks this as a dish meant to look refined at table: clear, shining and pale rather than muddy.