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Salmon, Spiced
Take a pound and a half of salmon. Put it in a saucepan with a pint of good vinegar and the third of a pint of water, and add an ounce of cinnamon, an ounce of whole black pepper, and a little salt. Boil the salmon in this till it is done enough. Let it get cold; then lay it closely in an earthen pan, pour the pickle and spices over it, and cover it closely to exclude the air. Keep it in a cool place till wanted.
A vinegar-cooked, vinegar-stored salmon meant to be eaten cold over the following few days. The proportions are workable as written; the two things that need attention are the spice quantities and what "a cool place" has to mean now.
- Use a non-reactive panA pint of vinegar will strip a bare aluminium or cast-iron pan and pick up a metallic taste. Stainless steel or enamelled cast iron only, and the same applies to the storage vessel — the "earthen pan" means a glazed crock, so use glass, glazed stoneware or a plastic container rather than metal.
- The spice weights are generousAn ounce each of cinnamon and whole black peppercorns is a lot: about 4 tablespoons of peppercorns and several cinnamon sticks for the pint and a third of liquid the recipe calls for. That is a hard, hot pickle by modern taste; halving both still gives a well-spiced result. Keep the spices whole so they can be poured over the fish at the end as directed.
- "Till it is done enough" is shortA pound and a half of salmon in a cut or two will be cooked through in about 8 to 12 minutes at a bare simmer — the flesh should just flake and the centre read 145F. Vinegar firms fish quickly, and salmon boiled hard turns dry and chalky.
- Cool in the liquidLet the fish cool in its own pickle rather than lifting it out hot. It reabsorbs liquid as it cools, which is where much of the flavour and moisture comes from.
- "A cool place" means the refrigeratorThe book says only "a cool place" — a larder, and a matter of days. Cooked fish in an acid pickle keeps well refrigerated for about three to four days; it is not a shelf-stable preserve, and the recipe gives no salt or acid measurement adequate for one. Keep it submerged and covered.
- Vinegar strength"Good vinegar" is unspecified, but in an English kitchen of this period it would most likely be malt vinegar, at ordinary table strength of around 5 per cent acidity. Modern distilled white vinegar works but tastes flatter.
- Yield and servingA pound and a half serves four as a cold first course or light lunch, drained and served with brown bread and butter, or with a salad and boiled potatoes. Do not serve the pickle as a sauce — spoon over a little of the strained liquid at most.
Spiced or pickled salmon belongs to the long era when a glut of river fish had to be made to last. Vinegar, whole pepper and cinnamon were a common combination, though bay, mace and cloves appear just as often, and the technique is essentially the same as the older English "souse" applied to mackerel, herring and eels. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries pickled salmon travelled: kits of fish packed in spiced vinegar came south from the Tweed, the Tyne and the Scottish rivers to London dealers, and "Newcastle salmon" was a recognised article of trade — one reason so many Victorian cookery books carry a version. By the time Cassell's was compiled, the railways and ice are usually said to have eroded much of the commercial need, and recipes like this one survive as a cold dish for the sideboard rather than as a means of preservation. The same vinegar-and-spice treatment of fish, eaten cold, is also a fixture of Anglo-Jewish cookery, where it is generally traced to Portuguese and Dutch practice.