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Broiled Salt Salmon or Halibut
If very salt freshen for an hour or two in cold water; if merely smoked and slightly salted, wash and cut in small pieces about an inch thick. Season well with pepper and salt, wrap each slice in tough paper well buttered. Twist the ends so the fish is inside a paper bag.
Put in a broiler and move over a clear coal fire for about eight minutes. Take the fish from the paper cases and pour over it a good egg sauce.-I. G. C.
A short method for salt-cured or cold-smoked fish, cooked in a buttered paper wrapper over live coals. Two things need translating: the vessel and the sauce.
- "Broiler" means a wire gridHere a broiler is a gridiron or wire grid held over the coals, of the sort that could be moved by hand over the fire; hinged double grids with long handles were common. The nearest modern equivalent is a grill basket over charcoal, or a gas grill at medium-high; an oven broiler works but the paper will scorch quickly under the direct element.
- "Tough paper"Use parchment. The phrase most likely meant a heavy unbleached kitchen or butcher paper; do not substitute wax paper, which melts, or foil, which traps more steam. The butter is not optional — it keeps the paper from sticking and from catching.
- Freshening salt fishThe recipe allows an hour or two in cold water even for very salt fish, which suits lightly cured pieces; heavily salted barrel fish is often given much longer, up to overnight with changes of water. Taste a sliver before cooking: if it is aggressively salty it needs longer.
- Skip the added saltThe instruction to "season well with pepper and salt" assumes fish that has been thoroughly freshened. With modern cold-smoked salmon or commercially salted fillets, pepper alone is enough.
- Eight minutes is for coal heatThat timing assumes a hot, clear bed of coals and inch-thick pieces. Over a gas grill, four to five minutes a side is closer; the fish is done when it flakes and is opaque through, around 145F.
- Egg sauceA period egg sauce is a plain butter sauce or thin white sauce with chopped hard-boiled egg stirred through, seasoned with pepper and often a little lemon. Roughly two hard-boiled eggs to a cup of sauce.
- YieldNo quantity is given. An inch-thick piece of four to six ounces per person, so about 1.5 lb of fish serves four.
Salt salmon and salt halibut were pantry staples rather than luxuries in nineteenth-century American households: fish was barrelled in brine at the fishing ports and shipped inland, where it kept for months and had to be soaked back into edibility before use. Cooking in a buttered paper case is the same idea as the French *en papillote*. The egg sauce is a standard of the period, appearing with boiled cod and salt fish throughout Anglo-American cookery — a cheap way to add richness and bulk to a preserved fish that had lost much of its own. The initials "I. G. C." mark this as a reader contribution.