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Salmon Souffle, Cold
Take half a pound of salmon, cook it in a mixture of light wine and lemon-juice, and free it from skin and bone. Pound the flesh in a mortar; add to it the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs, also the whites after they have been chopped and sieved; season well with French mustard, and salt and cayenne to taste, and a little anchovy or shrimp essence; then moisten with a gill of the mixture in which the fish has been boiled, stiffened with a quarter of an ounce of sheet gelatine. Sieve the whole, and mix in half a pint of whipped cream. Take a paper or china case, and put the mixture in it. It should stand up above the case, and be sufficiently stiff to retain its shape. It should be set on ice to make it quite cold and firm. This may be ornamented in various ways. A round of green mayonnaise may be laid on, and a smaller round of cream aspic on that. Crayfish tails, or shrimps, or prawns may be laid on, with tiny sprigs of chervil in between. Cost, about 3s. for one good-sized souffle, or six to eight small ones.
A cold "souffle" in the Victorian sense — nothing is baked, and the name refers only to the mixture standing proud of its case like a risen one. The hinge is the gelatine: too little and it slumps over the rim, too much and it turns to rubber.
- UnitsCassell's is a British book, so a pint is 20 fl oz and a gill is 5 fl oz — a generous half cup of poaching liquid, and half a pint of cream means 10 fl oz (1 1/4 US cups) before whipping. A quarter ounce of sheet gelatine is roughly 7 g, about three or four modern leaves.
- Blooming the gelatineSoak the sheets in cold water until floppy, squeeze them out, then dissolve them in the warm strained poaching liquid rather than adding them to the cold purée. Let that liquid cool to barely tepid before it meets the whipped cream or the cream will deflate.
- Poaching the fishHalf a pound of salmon in "light wine and lemon-juice" wants only enough liquid to cover, held just below a simmer for 8-10 minutes for a thick piece. Boiling squeezes the fish dry and clouds the liquid you are about to set.
- French mustardThis is smooth Dijon, not the hot English powder. Start with a teaspoon; the anchovy or shrimp essence is already salty, so season at the end.
- Anchovy or shrimp essenceBottled essences of this kind are now hard to find, though anchovy sauce is still sold. Anchovy paste from a tube, or a dash of fish sauce, gives a similar savoury backbone; start with rather less than the recipe's volume and taste.
- PoundingA food processor replaces the mortar, but pulse rather than run it — salmon worked to a paste goes gluey. The final sieving is what gives the smooth texture, and it is worth doing even after machine work.
- The caseA 'paper case' may be a made-up paper caisse of the kind used for cold entrees, or a collar of parchment tied round a straight-sided dish so the mixture can be built above the rim and the paper removed once set. A small souffle dish or ramekins work as well.
- Setting'On ice' meant packing the case in ice; a refrigerator does the same job now. Allow at least 4 hours, better overnight. Check the set on a teaspoonful chilled quickly before committing the whole mixture to its case.
- GarnishesGreen mayonnaise is mayonnaise blended with blanched spinach, tarragon or chervil; cream aspic is a light savoury jelly slackened with cream. Both must be nearly cold or they will melt the surface.
- YieldThe three shillings quoted covers one good-sized souffle or, alternatively, six to eight small ones; the recipe does not state how many the large souffle serves.
Cold savoury "souffles" belong to the late-Victorian and Edwardian cold table, where gelatine did the work that beaten egg white and oven heat did in the hot version — the word described the shape and lightness rather than the method. It sits with the aspics, chaudfroids and moulded creams that a cook was expected to master: poach, pound, sieve, set, decorate. Commercial sheet gelatine and the ice-box made such dishes more practical in ordinary households over the second half of the nineteenth century; before that, cooks drew their setting power from long-boiled calf's foot or isinglass. The costing in shillings suits a book pitched at readers running a household to a budget, and the crayfish, prawns and chervil on top show the same instinct that produced the elaborate moulded salmon centrepieces of period buffet suppers.