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Salmon Pie, Hot
Make a short paste as follows. Take a pound of flour and spread it in a circle on a slab, lay in the centre the yolk of an egg, ten ounces of butter, half a glassful of water, and a pinch of salt. Dilute the butter with the liquid, then introduce the flour gradully into it. As soon as a firm paste is obtained, break (briser) it three times with the palms of both hands. Gather it up, and set it aside for half an hour. Well butter the inside of a round pie-mould, and set the vessel on a baking-sheet. Then make a quenelle forcemeat with ten or twelve ounces of the flesh of pike. Take about a pound and a half of fresh salmon, remove the skin and bones, and divide the flesh into squares. Chop one onion, fry it in a stewpan with oil and butter, adding a few spoonfuls of fresh-chopped mushrooms. When the moisture of the above is reduced, add two or three raw chopped truffles and the pieces of salmon. Fry over a sharp fire for a few minutes, season with salt and spices, and moisten with half a glassful of Madeira. Let the whole boil for a few minutes, keeping the saucepan covered. Mould two-thirds of the prepared paste into a ball, and roll it out into a thin, circular, flat form. Raise the sides of this paste, pressing it between the fingers so as to form a sort of bag. Lift the paste carefully, and place it on the mould, covering it well at the bottom and along the sides; cut the paste half an inch above the rim of the mould, and then mask it at the bottom and along the sides with a laver of forcemeat. Above this layer place half of the slices of salmon with some of the fine herbs; mask again with forcemeat, and pile up the rest of the fish in a dome-like shape, rising above the rim of the mould. Cover the pieces of salmon with another layer of forcemeat, and over all place the rest of the paste rolled out very thin. Fasten the edges of the pastry, pressing them together so as to render the paste thinner; cut it regularly, in order to be pinched all round with pastry pincers. With the trimmings of the paste prepare a few imitation leaves, which arrange as a rosace on the dome, in the top of which form a small cavity; cover it with three small rounds of paste of different sizes, placed one above another like a pyramid. Egg the pie, and put it into a moderate oven; seven or eight minutes later cover it with paper, and bake it for one hour and a half. On taking it out, having put it on a dish, remove the mould, and cut the dome all round its centre, through which aperture pour into the pie a little white sauce reduced, with extract prepared with wine, and the trimmings and bones of the pike and salmon. Cover the pie, and serve.
This is a French pâté chaud written for a professional kitchen, and it assumes you can build a lined raised pie and make quenelle forcemeat without being told how. Nothing here is dangerous, but several of the quantities and the long bake need thought.
- The hinge: keep the salmon underdoneThe fish is fried, then baked for an hour and a half inside insulating pastry and forcemeat. Sear the salmon cubes only until the outsides are set and still translucent within, and cut them large — 1 to 1½ inch squares — or they will be dry and chalky by the time the crust colours.
- The pasteA pound of flour to ten ounces of butter is a rich pâte brisée, richer than the usual half-fat-to-flour shortcrust. "Break (briser) it three times with the palms" means smearing the dough away from you across the slab and regathering it, which distributes the butter in sheets rather than developing gluten. Rest it a full half hour, refrigerated in modern practice.
- "Half a glassful"Genuinely imprecise. A period cookery glass is reckoned at anything from about 2 fl oz (a wineglass) up to 5 fl oz, so half a glassful may mean a tablespoon or two at one end and about 2½ fl oz at the other -- add water to the paste by feel, and use the smaller end for the Madeira if you want the filling dry.
- Moderate ovenNo figure is given in the text; around 350F is the usual modern reading. The paper cover after seven or eight minutes exists because a raised pie of this height browns long before the centre is hot; foil does the same job. The pie is done when the centre reads about 145F.
- The mouldA round hinged or spring-sided raised-pie mould, buttered and set on a baking sheet, not a modern casserole dish. A 7-inch springform tin, well buttered, is the closest common substitute; the sides must release without tearing the crust.
- Quenelle forcemeat of pikePike is rarely sold now. Any lean white fish works — whiting, haddock, hake — pounded or processed with egg white, seasoning and cream until it holds a shape. Ten to twelve ounces of raw fish yields enough to mask the mould and layer the salmon.
- TrufflesThree raw chopped truffles is Victorian restaurant extravagance. The dish works without them; a small quantity of dried mushroom soaked and chopped gives depth in the same place, though not the same perfume.
- The sauce poured in at the endThe text asks only for a reduced white sauce, with an extract prepared with wine and the trimmings and bones of the pike and salmon. Make it while the pie bakes, keep it thin enough to run, and pour it in hot through the cut dome so it reaches the layers rather than pooling on top.
- YieldAbout a pound and a half of salmon plus forcemeat and a pound of pastry serves eight to ten as a course. It is meant to be brought whole to the table and cut in wedges.
This is French grande cuisine transcribed into an English reference book: a hot raised fish pie of the kind that came out of nineteenth-century restaurant and household kitchens working in the Carême tradition, where a pâté chaud was as much an architectural exercise as a dish — hence the pastry leaves arranged as a rosace and the little pyramid of graduated rounds crowning the dome. The French verb briser survives untranslated in the text, and the pike quenelle forcemeat points the same direction; pike, bony and unloved as a fillet, was long prized in France precisely because pounding it into quenelles turned its gelatinous flesh into something silky, a technique particularly associated with Lyonnais cooking. Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery was compiled for an English middle-class readership that wanted access to this repertoire, and recipes like this one appear alongside far plainer fare because the book's ambition was completeness rather than practicality. The pouring of a reduced wine sauce through a hole cut in the lid after baking is the older method of keeping a raised pie moist, the same logic that fills a cold pork pie with jellied stock.