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Salmon Roes, Caviare Of
Wash the roes thoroughly in milk and water, and drain them till dry. Let them lie in salt for two days. A pound of spawn will require two ounces and a half of salt. Take the roes up, lay them on a board before the fire, and let them remain for some hours. Crush them with a roller, and with every pound of spawn put eight drops of spirit of nitre and as much pounded saltpetre as will cover a sixpence. Press the preparation into jars, cover the surface with writing-paper, and spread upon this a little cold lard. Tie bladder over the top, and keep in a warm place.
This is a nineteenth-century preserving formula for raw fish eggs, and it fails on three separate counts that cannot be corrected by adjusting the timings. It is printed here as a document of how caviare substitutes were once made at home, not as something to attempt.
- Spirit of nitre is not a food ingredientUnder that name Victorian shops sold either nitric acid diluted in alcohol or "sweet spirit of nitre" (ethyl nitrite in spirit), both sold as chemicals and medicines. Neither has any place in food, and eight drops per pound is a dose no modern cook has any way to assess or source safely.
- The saltpetre is unmeasured"As much as will cover a sixpence" is a coin-sized heap, not a weight. Curing nitrate is regulated by parts per million precisely because the safe window is narrow, and a volume guess against an obsolete coin gives no usable figure.
- Botulism, specificallySalted, un-heated fish roe sealed under lard and bladder is the classic anaerobic environment for Clostridium botulinum type E, which is associated with fish and tolerates cold. Outbreaks worldwide have been traced to exactly this class of product: uncooked, lightly salted, sealed fish or roe.
- "Keep in a warm place" is the worst partWarm storage of a low-acid, sealed, never-cooked fish product actively encourages the organism the salt is meant to suppress. The roe is never brought to any temperature at all — the fireside drying stage is not cooking.
- The salt ratio is below a preserving cureThe salt ratio — Two and a half ounces to the pound is roughly 15 per cent by weight of the roe before any is drained away, and the wash in milk and water plus two days' contact does not guarantee uniform penetration through an intact roe sac.
- Bladder and writing-paperDried bladder tied over a jar was the standard Victorian seal, and the paper-and-lard layer beneath it excluded air. Both were reasonable technology for the period and both produce the anaerobic conditions that make this recipe dangerous rather than safe.
- If you want salmon roeBuy prepared ikura, or follow a current recipe from a source that specifies brine strength and refrigeration temperatures.
True caviare is sturgeon roe, and by the time Cassell's was compiled it was expensive and largely imported from Russia, so British and American household books offered imitations made from the roe of other fish, salmon among them. Salted salmon roe is a genuine food tradition in its own right — the Russian ketovaya ikra and Japanese ikura both rest on it — but those cures rely on brief contact with a measured brine and cold storage, not on nitre compounds and a warm cupboard. What dates this entry is the free use of pharmacy chemicals: spirit of nitre and saltpetre were ordinary counter purchases in the nineteenth century, saltpetre used domestically for reddening cured meat, and a cookbook could name them as casually as it named salt. The measurement by coin — as much saltpetre as covers a sixpence — belongs to the same world, where a cook's reference standards were the objects in her pocket rather than a scale.