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Salmon, Rechauffe Of
Take the remains of cold boiled salmon; free it from skin and bone, and tear the flesh into flakes with two forks. Bruise the bones, and simmer them gently for half an hour in as much water as will cover them. Strain the liquor, and thicken it with a little flour and butter. Boil it till smooth, season with pepper and salt, and add a tea-spoonful of mushroom ketchup, a tea-spoonful of essence of anchovies, half a tea-spoonful of strained lemon-juice, and a pinch of powdered mace. Mix a pint of shelled shrimps with the flakes of salmon, stir the whole into the sauce, and let it heat gently, but it must not boil. Serve very hot. Time, about three-quarters of an hour. Sufficient for a moderate-sized dish.
A Victorian leftovers dish, and a good one, provided the sauce never reaches a boil once the fish goes in. Everything else here is straightforward once the two vanished bottled seasonings are accounted for.
- The hinge: no boilingCooked salmon flakes and shrimp are already fully cooked; they only need warming through, three or four minutes over low heat. A boil breaks the flakes into mush and turns the shrimp tight and squeaky.
- A pint of shrimpsA pint of shelled shrimp works out somewhere in the region of 8 to 12 oz by weight, depending on the shrimp. Small cold-water shrimp are closest to what the book means; large tiger prawns are the wrong texture and should be cut down if used.
- Essence of anchoviesA thin bottled anchovy sauce, more liquid and dilute than modern paste. Use about half a teaspoon of anchovy paste, or one mashed fillet, in place of the teaspoonful called for, and taste before salting.
- Mushroom ketchupStill sold in Britain but scarce elsewhere. A teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce plus a few drops of soy is a fair stand-in; the point is dark savoury depth, not mushroom flavour as such.
- The bone stockHalf an hour is ample for fish bones, and long simmering of salmon bones is generally held to give a muddy result. The recipe covers the bones with only as much water as needed, so the yield of strained liquor will be small.
- Thickening "with a little flour and butter"Cook 1 tablespoon each of butter and flour together for a minute or two, then whisk in the strained fish liquor. For a cup of stock this gives a sauce that coats but still pours.
- MaceThe dried outer covering of the nutmeg, warmer and less sharp than nutmeg itself. Ground mace is the intended form; a smaller pinch of grated nutmeg will do if that is what is on hand.
- Time and yieldThe stated three-quarters of an hour is almost entirely the stock; the assembly takes ten minutes. 'A moderate-sized dish' probably means three or four servings; toast or a border of mashed potato would suit it.
- Leftover fishCooked salmon kept refrigerated should be used within two days, and reheated gently to steaming through the centre. If it has sat out at room temperature after dinner, start with fresh fish instead.
Réchauffé is simply French for "reheated," and in Victorian cookery books it became a formal category rather than an apology: dishes built on yesterday's joint or fish. Salmon was often boiled whole or in a large piece for a dinner, so a substantial remnant was routine in any household that could afford it, and readers of a book like Cassell's would have expected instruction on turning it into something that looked deliberate. The two bottled seasonings, mushroom ketchup and essence of anchovies, were the workhorse savoury flavourings of the nineteenth-century English kitchen, arguably doing the work that concentrated stocks might have done in a professional kitchen. Building the sauce from the bruised bones rather than milk or plain water is the mark of a well-drilled recipe: nothing edible from the original fish is thrown away, which is the whole logic of the réchauffé.