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SALMON, MOULD OF (for supper or luncheon)
No. 1.--Take a slice of cooked salmon weighting about a pound. Fry this in hot fat till it is lightly browned, then pound it in a mortar to a smooth paste with its weight in fine bread-crumbs which have been soaked in hot milk for ten minutes. Season the mixture rather highly with salt and pepper and a blade of mace powdered. Bind it together with the yolks of four well-beaten eggs, press it into a buttered mould, and bake in a moderate oven, or steam it as a pudding would be steamed. Turn it out carefully, and garnish the dish with crayfish, parsley, or button mushrooms. Time to bake, twenty minutes. Probable cost, 2s. Sufficient for four or five persons. No. 2.--Butter a mould rather thickly, and fill it with slices of fresh salmon, freed from skin and bone, and seasoned with pepper and salt. Pack the slices as closely as possible, and fill the crevices with butter. Cover the mould closely, plunge it into boiling water, and keep it boiling for an hour. Turn it out carefully, and garnish the dish with parsley. Probable cost, salmon, when plentiful, 1s. to 1s. 4d. per pound.
Two distinct dishes under one heading: the first a baked or steamed salmon pudding built on a panada of soaked crumbs, the second little more than salmon potted in butter and cooked in a water bath. Both were meant to be turned out whole, so the mould and its buttering matter as much as the fish.
- The hinge: bind and mouldThe whole point is a clean turn-out. Butter the mould heavily, line the base with a disc of parchment, and let the baked version stand five minutes before inverting so the egg set firms up.
- Moderate oven350F/175C. Twenty minutes is the book's own timing; the mixture (1 lb salmon plus its weight in soaked crumbs and four yolks) fills a good-sized mould, and a deep one will need longer and is best sat in a bain-marie to stop the egg curdling at the edges.
- MouldA Victorian mould here is a plain or fluted metal pudding mould with a close-fitting lid or covering. A pudding basin covered with foil and tied down does the same job.
- PoundingThe mortar work is a food processor's job now. Pulse rather than run it continuously; salmon worked too long goes gluey and pasty rather than smooth.
- Blade of maceA blade is one strip of the dried aril from nutmeg, about 1/4 teaspoon once ground. Ground mace from a jar is a fair substitute in the same quantity.
- Frying the salmon firstThe fish is already cooked; the frying is for colour and flavour only. Keep it brief and hot or the flesh dries out and the paste turns fibrous.
- No. 2 and donenessAn hour in boiling water leaves the salmon far past the 125-130F that modern cooks aim for. Expect it firm and flaky rather than pink; the recipe does not say whether it is served hot or cold.
- Crayfish garnishWhole boiled crayfish were a standard Victorian fish-dish garnish. Cooked prawns in the shell read the same way on the plate and are easier to buy.
- Cost and yield2s. is the Victorian shilling price, not a guide to anything now. No. 1 gives four or five portions; No. 2 depends entirely on your mould, but reckon a pound of salmon to serve four as a cold lunch.
Moulded and shaped dishes were the backbone of the Victorian supper and luncheon table, where food was expected to arrive cold, self-supporting and capable of standing on a sideboard through a long meal. The first recipe is a fish version of the standard forcemeat pudding: cooked flesh pounded with a milk-soaked bread panada and bound with yolks, a technique that runs from medieval pounded meats through to the quenelle. The second belongs to the potting tradition, where fish or meat sealed under butter kept for days in a cool larder and could be sliced as wanted. Salmon's place in such a book reflects a real shift in the period: improved transport, the railways above all, brought river and Scottish salmon to London and the provincial towns in far greater quantity, and the price note of 1s. to 1s. 4d. a pound "when plentiful" records a fish that was still a treat but no longer the preserve of the very rich.