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SALMON, SALTED (Norwegian fashion)
In the northern parts of the Continent salmon is salted just like beef and pork. Before cooking the salted fish, let it steep in cold water for forty-eight hours: the time may be shorter or longer, however, according to the size of the piece. Lay it in a stewpan, moisten with plenty of cold water, and bring it to the boiling point. Draw it back, keeping the fish covered; let it stand for ten minutes, then drain the salmon, place it on some boiled but not chopped spinach, pour some melted butter over, and send the fish to table. The spinach and melted butter may be served separately.
A method for cooking bought salt salmon rather than for curing it, and almost everything depends on the soak. The cooking itself is gentle poaching in the residual heat of water just brought to the boil.
- The soak is the whole dishForty-eight hours in cold water is right for a thick, heavily salted side; a thinner fillet or a lightly cured piece may need only twelve to twenty-four hours. Change the water three or four times, keep it in the refrigerator, and taste a slice of the raw flesh at the thick end before you commit to cooking it.
- "Melted butter"In Victorian English cookery this means the standard butter sauce — butter worked with a little flour and water or milk into a smooth pouring sauce — not simply butter melted in a pan.
- StewpanA straight-sided pan with a lid. Any pan that holds the piece flat and well covered with water is correct; a deep stockpot makes the fish awkward to lift out whole.
- "Draw it back"Move the pan off the heat entirely, or to the coolest part of the range. The fish is meant to finish in falling heat, which is why salmon cooked this way stays in moist flakes rather than curdling into white albumen.
- Ten minutes may not be enoughThe fish comes up to the boil with the water, so it is already well heated before the standing time begins; even so, a very thick cut may be short after ten minutes off the heat. If it is, return the pan to a low burner without letting the water boil again.
- Boiled but not chopped spinachWhole leaves, wilted and pressed dry, so the fish sits on a bed rather than in a purée. Modern bagged spinach collapses in under two minutes and holds a great deal of water — squeeze it hard or it will thin the butter sauce.
- Salt still in the fishDo not salt the spinach or the sauce until you have tasted the cooked salmon. Even after two days of soaking, the flesh carries considerably more salt than fresh fish.
- YieldA 2 lb piece, soaked and poached, serves four to six as a main course. The recipe gives no quantity at all.
Salting was how the northern salmon rivers — Norwegian, Scottish, Baltic — sent their summer glut through the winter and out to market before ice and rail made fresh transport routine. Cassell's frames it as a Continental habit, noting that the fish is treated "just like beef and pork," which is precisely the point: dry-salting or brining in a barrel was the same technology applied to whatever protein came in a rush and had to be held. The pairing with spinach and butter sauce is an English serving convention rather than a Norwegian one; in Scandinavia salt salmon more often met potatoes, dill or a mustard sauce.