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Salmon Cakes
One can of salmon picked up in small pieces, piece of butter size of an egg, one small cup of hot water. Salt and pepper and mix with cracker crumbs.
Make in balls, roll in flour and fry in lard.
MRS. J. H. BIGLOw.
A community-cookbook croquette that depends entirely on getting the moisture right: the hot water and butter soften the cracker crumbs, and if you add either too freely the balls slump in the fat. Mix, then let the mixture stand ten minutes before shaping so the crumbs finish swelling and you can judge the true consistency.
- Butter the size of an eggAbout 2 ounces, or 4 tablespoons. Melting it into the cup of hot water before adding the crumbs distributes it evenly.
- The can of salmonA period can of salmon was a one-pound tall can. Modern tall cans are 14.75 oz, which is close enough; two 6-oz cans will also do. Drain it, but keep the soft vertebrae and skin and mash them in, as the original "picked up in small pieces" assumes.
- Cracker crumbsSoda or common crackers, crushed fine, not the sweetened or heavily salted crackers sold now. Roughly a cup to a cup and a quarter for a pound of fish; add it gradually until the mass just holds a ball.
- Chill before shapingNot in the original. Half an hour in the refrigerator firms the fat and keeps the balls from breaking apart in the pan.
- FryingLard shallow-fried at 350-365F gives the crisp shell intended here. Neutral oil works the same way. The mixture is fully cooked already, so you are only browning: three to four minutes total, turning once.
- SeasoningCanned salmon is salted, so start with a quarter teaspoon of salt and a good grind of pepper for the whole batch and taste the raw mixture before shaping.
- YieldAbout ten balls the size of a golf ball, serving four.
Canned salmon was among the first industrially processed proteins to reach inland American households at a price ordinary families could pay. Pacific canneries on the Columbia River and in British Columbia were shipping in volume by the 1870s and 1880s, and the railroads carried the tins inland, where fresh sea fish was a rarity. Recipes of this kind, croquettes bound with cracker crumbs and fried, are common in community cookbooks of the period, usually contributed by name as here. They were valued precisely because the pantry held the tin all year: a hot, substantial supper dish built from shelf-stable fish, a little butter and whatever crackers were in the box.