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Salmon, Soused
Put, say, three pounds of cold cooked salmon into a deep dish. Put a pint of cold vinegar into a saucepan with half a pint of water. Add an inch of whole ginger, a tea-spoonful of peppercorns, three cloves, a blade of mace, a pinch of cayenne, and a tea-spoonful of salt. Bring the liquor to the boil; let it boil for ten minutes, pour it out, and let it get cold. Strain it over the salmon, and let it remain in a cool place for several hours. Serve with a little of the pickle in the dish with it. Time to boil the pickle, ten minutes. Probable cost when salmon is plentiful, about 3s. 8d. Sufficient for eight or nine persons.
A cold-pickle dish rather than a preserve: the salmon is already cooked, and the spiced vinegar is a dressing that firms and seasons it. Nothing here is technically difficult, but the measures are imperial and the storage advice belongs to a house with a larder.
- Imperial measuresCassell's pint is 20 fl oz, so the pickle is 2.5 cups vinegar to 1.25 cups water — a little more than a US pint and half-pint. Keep the 2:1 ratio if you scale it.
- The vinegarVictorian household vinegar was usually malt, and malt is still the closest match in flavour; its strength was not standardised as modern vinegars are. Cider vinegar works; sharp white distilled vinegar will flatten the fish. Do not dilute further than the recipe says — the water is already softening the bite.
- Boil the pickle, then cool it completelyThis is the hinge. Hot liquor poured over cooked salmon will cloud it, break the flakes and squeeze out moisture. The ten-minute boil is to draw out the spices; the liquor must be cold before it touches the fish.
- Whole ginger and a blade of maceAn inch of whole ginger means dried root ginger, bruised, not fresh — fresh will read sweeter and greener but is an acceptable substitute. A blade of mace is one piece of the lacy aril around a nutmeg; a scant quarter-teaspoon of ground mace, added at the end of the boil, stands in.
- Cook the salmon first, and cook it gentlyThe recipe assumes leftovers from a poached or boiled fish. Poach at a bare shiver until the flesh just parts, then cool — salmon overcooked before souscing turns dry and cottony once the acid gets at it.
- Cold place means refrigeratorDo this in the refrigerator now, and cover the dish. The recipe asks only for "several hours". The pickle is a seasoning, not a preservative at these proportions: eat within three days.
- Cost and yield3s. 8d. is a period price for three pounds of salmon in season, of no use as a guide now. Eight or nine servings is accurate if this is one dish on a cold table; count on five or six if it is the main course.
- ServingServe cold with some of the strained pickle spooned over, brown bread and butter, and a green salad or cucumber. Lift the fish out with a slice rather than a fork so the flakes stay whole.
Souscing — cooking fish and then steeping it in spiced vinegar — is one of the oldest English methods of keeping a glut of fish edible for a few days more, and the word itself is generally traced to an Old French term for pickle or pickling liquid. It appears in English cookery books for centuries before Cassell's, most often applied to mackerel, herring and eels, all oily fish whose richness the vinegar cuts. Its presence in a late-Victorian dictionary of cookery is less about preservation than economy and the cold table: salmon was a large fish bought whole, and a household that had served it hot needed something to do with the remainder. The recipe ends by directing that it be served with a little of its own pickle.