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Salmon Salad, with Jelly
Take a piece of cold boiled salmon, weighing about two pounds, trim away the bones and skin, and divide the flesh into squares. Place these squares in a dish, season, and baste with oil and vinegar. Have ready a plain border mould embedded in ice; ornament the sides and bottom with gherkins, whites of egg, fillets of anchovy, and capers, always dipping the details in half-set aspic jelly. Fill the mould by degrees with cold jelly. Twenty minutes before serving, turn the mould out on to a cold dish, half fill the space enclosed by the border with chopped aspic jelly, and on it place the squares of salmon in layers, alternated with egg mayonnaise sauce. Serve with mayonnaise sauce in a sauce-boat.
A Victorian cold buffet centrepiece: a clear aspic ring built in a mould, unmoulded, and filled with dressed salmon. Nothing in it is difficult, but the whole thing depends on temperature control at every stage.
- The hinge: work at three different jelly temperaturesThe décor is dipped in aspic that is half-set — syrupy and just clinging — so it glues the gherkins and anchovy in place without washing them off. The filling jelly must be cold but still liquid, poured in thin layers so each sets before the next goes on. Warm jelly at any point dissolves the pattern you have just laid.
- Aspic jellyAspic here means a clarified savoury jelly — for fish, usually built on fish stock, set with gelatine and sharpened with a little vinegar or lemon. This page does not say how the jelly is made, so the seasoning is inference. Powdered gelatine at roughly 1 oz to 2 pints of well-flavoured stock gives a jelly firm enough to unmould; commercial aspic powder works and saves the clarification with egg white.
- The border mouldA ring mould, plain-sided; the recipe gives no size. "Embedded in ice" means buried to the rim in a bowl of ice and water — the Victorian substitute for a refrigerator, and still the fastest way to set thin layers of jelly. A modern fridge does the same job more slowly; the freezer does not, as ice crystals cloud the jelly.
- Egg mayonnaise sauceMost likely mayonnaise with chopped hard-boiled egg worked through it, since plain mayonnaise is already served separately in a sauce-boat; the recipe does not define the term. If you make the mayonnaise from scratch it will contain raw yolk; use pasteurised eggs if serving anyone elderly, pregnant or immunocompromised.
- Chopped aspicExtra jelly set flat in a shallow tray, then chopped roughly with a wet knife so it glitters. The recipe gives no quantity — set aside enough to half fill the ring, plus a little for the décor.
- UnmouldingDip the mould briefly in hot water — a few seconds only — wipe it, and invert onto a chilled dish. Longer and the pattern melts. The recipe specifies unmoulding and filling twenty minutes before serving, though it gives no reason for the timing.
- Fish and quantityThe two pounds is the weight of the cooked piece before trimming, since the bones and skin come away afterwards; poach and cool the fish in its liquor. The dressing of oil and vinegar is a brief marinade rather than an overnight soak.
- Yield and servingServes eight to ten as a cold course. Keep it refrigerated until the moment it goes to table and do not let it stand out more than an hour; aspic at room temperature is an excellent growth medium.
Moulded aspic work of this kind was the showpiece of the late-Victorian cold table, and the border mould — a ring filled at the last minute with something dressed — let a cook prepare the difficult part hours ahead. The technique is generally traced to the French grande cuisine of Carême and his successors, in which clarified jelly, laid in thin layers over designs of truffle, egg white and anchovy, was the accepted way to make cold food look composed. In Cassell's the pattern here is built from gherkins, capers and hard-boiled egg rather than truffle. Salmon suited the form well: it was the prestige fish of the British table, it holds together when cold, and its colour reads against a clear jelly. The style faded with the domestic staff who had time for it, and aspic's reputation was finished off in the mid-twentieth century by an era of gelatine salads that borrowed the technique without the stock.