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Salmon

The salmon, according to Izaak Walton, is the king of fresh-water fish. It is called a river fish, because it is generally caught in rivers, and the river is its birthplace; but the sea is its home and its pasture-ground, and to this it must return periodically to renew its strength or die. In fact, it inhabits fresh and salt water alternately, spending its winter in the sea and its summer in the river. Moreover, as the swallow returns to the roof or shed that gave it shelter, so does the salmon to the gravelly river's bed where it first saw the light. This fact has been repeatedly proved, and involves important consequences. If all the salmon in a river are caught, the river will be from that time salmonless, unless it can be re-stocked with young salmon, who, after being reared in it, will at the proper age find their way to the sea but return to the river again. Certainly no stranger salmon cruising along the coast will mistake that river's mouth for its own river's mouth. This fact has been already successfully taken advantage of, and salmon have been naturalised in rivers where formerly there were no signs of them. Salmon are never found in warm latitudes. They are distributed over the North of Europe and Asia, and are abundant, and even comparatively cheap, in some parts of North America. The price is kept up, however, by the facility with which the fish is packed in ice and sent to a distance by rail, or tinned, smoked, and otherwise preserved. The penny-a-pound times, when apprentices and servants refused to eat salmon more than three times a week, are gone for ever.

The flesh of the salmon is rich and delicious in flavour. To be eaten in perfection it should be cooked before it has lost a tide. When this is done there will be found between the flakes a white creamy substance which is very highly esteemed. Nevertheless, the fish when in this condition is very indigestible, and it is much more wholesome when it has been kept a day or two. Then the curd undergoes a change, and melts down, and though less delicate in flavour, the fish becomes richer and much more wholesome. The flesh of the male has the best flavour, and has more curd than that of the female.

Salmon is in season from the beginning of February to the end of August. It is cheapest in July and August. No other fish can be cooked in so many different ways. It requires to be well done; when under-done it is wholly uneatable.