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Salmon, Matelote Of
Boil in the usual way two or three thick slices from the tail end of a large salmon, or, if liked, boil instead a small salmon, trussed in the form of a letter S. When done enough, drain the fish, put it upon a dish without any napkin, and pour over and around it some sauce prepared as follows. Put three-quarters of a pint of thick brown sauce into a stewpan with eighteen button onions which have been fried in butter till brown. Let them boil for ten minutes, and add two glassfuls of claret, a small lump of sugar, a little pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg, and a tea-spoonful of anchovy essence. Stir the sauce over the fire until it is thick and coats the spoon. After it is taken from the fire, stir a small piece of fresh butter in it until dissolved. Mushrooms or oysters may be added to this sauce if liked. It ought to be very savoury. When brown sauce is not at hand, it may be easily and quickly made by kneading together in a saucepan equal proportions of butter and flour, stirring the mixture quickly over a slow fire till it is lightly browned without being at all burnt, and moistening it with stock made from bones, or, failing this, with water. Time to make the sauce, half an hour. Probable cost of salmon, when plentiful, 1s. to 1s. 4d. per pound.
A Victorian dressed salmon with a red-wine and onion sauce borrowed from freshwater matelote. Nearly all the modern work is in the sauce; the fish only needs restraint.
- Do not actually boil the salmon"Boil in the usual way" in Victorian books generally meant water kept just below a boil, usually salted, sometimes acidulated. Poach at 160-170F until the thickest part reads 125-130F, roughly 8-10 minutes per inch of thickness. A rolling boil will curdle white albumin out of the surface and dry the flesh.
- Three-quarters of a pintAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so this is 15 fl oz, near enough 13⁄4 US cups of brown sauce. Enough to nap two or three thick cutlets generously.
- Two glassfuls of claretGenuinely imprecise. A Victorian wine glass ran 2 to 2.5 fl oz, so about half a cup of dry red Bordeaux-style wine; some tables of the period assume more. Start with 4 fl oz and taste, since the sauce is reduced afterwards.
- Button onionsPearl or small pickling onions, peeled whole. Frozen peeled pearl onions work and save considerable time; brown them in butter properly, as the colour is half the sauce's flavour.
- Anchovy essenceA thin bottled anchovy extract, now scarce. Half a teaspoon of anchovy paste, or a teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce, gives the same savoury lift. It should read as depth, not as fish.
- The brown sauce shortcutThe fallback given is a brown roux: equal butter and flour cooked slowly to the colour of a hazelnut shell, then loosened with stock. Cook it past pale blond or the sauce tastes of raw flour, but pull it the moment it smells nutty; a burnt roux cannot be rescued and thickens poorly.
- The butter at the endStirring cold butter in off the heat is a monter au beurre. Keep the pan off the flame while doing it, or the emulsion breaks and the sauce goes greasy.
- Oysters, if usedAdd them at the very end and let them sit in the hot sauce for a minute or two, just until the edges ruffle. Ten minutes of simmering makes them rubbery.
- Serving and yieldTwo or three thick tail cutlets will serve about four; a small whole salmon, six to eight. Omitting the napkin makes sense here, since the usual folded cloth for boiled fish would soak up the sauce poured over.
A matelote takes its name from matelot, French for sailor, and belongs properly to the freshwater fish of the Loire: eel, carp and pike stewed in red wine with browned button onions and mushrooms. Cassell's does what Victorian English cookery is often said to have done with a French formula, which is to keep the sauce and swap the fish, here for boiled salmon dressed on the dish rather than stewed in the liquor. The claret and the anchovy essence together are very much of the period; the note on price, a shilling to sixteen pence a pound "when plentiful", is a reminder that salmon was still a seasonal river fish in Britain rather than a year-round farmed one, cheap in the run and dear out of it. Serving it with a dark wine sauce also suited the tail-end cuts, which were leaner and less prized than the middle.