Salmon Bisque
Drain the oil from one-third can of salmon, remove the bones and skin and rub through a sieve. Add gradually one quart of scalded milk, one and a half teaspoons of salt, a dust of pepper, four tablespoons of flour and two tablespoons of butter rubbed into a paste to bind the soup. This is a very nice way to utilize the remains of a can of salmon, remains not large enough to re-serve in any other way. Crab meat or lobster can be made into a bisque in the same way.
A thrift soup built on the beurre mani sercase — flour and butter rubbed cold into a paste — rather than a cooked roux. The whole thing takes about fifteen minutes once the fish is sieved.
- "One-third can"Period salmon cans commonly ran a pound; a third is roughly 5 oz, in the range of one modern small can (5–6 oz) before draining. If you are working from leftovers, aim for about a cup of flaked fish per quart of milk.
- The oilThe liquid drained off here is largely the fish's own oil; modern cans are usually packed in water or their own juices. Drain it either way, but water-packed fish gives a leaner soup, so do not skimp on the butter.
- Bones and skinCanned salmon bones are soft and edible, and many cooks now mash them in for the calcium. Sieving them out, as here, gives a smoother bisque — a food processor followed by a fine sieve does the job faster than a wooden spoon.
- Scalded milkBring the milk to about 180F, just until it shivers and a skin begins to form at the edge. Scalding was originally about killing off souring bacteria in raw milk; with pasteurized milk it simply gets the liquid hot so the thickening happens quickly and evenly.
- Binding the soupThis is the hinge. Rub the 4 tablespoons flour and 2 tablespoons butter together into a smooth cold paste, then whisk it into the hot milk in small pieces. Dropped in as a lump it will leave floury threads.
- Cook it outThe recipe gives no time. Once thickened, hold it at a bare simmer for 5 minutes or so to cook the raw taste out of the flour, stirring so the bottom does not catch. Do not let it boil hard or the milk may separate.
- SeasoningA teaspoon and a half of salt for a quart is on the generous side when the salmon itself is salted; add half, taste at the end, and finish with a little lemon or a spoonful of sherry if you want it less flat.
- YieldAbout five cups — four modest first-course servings.
- Crab and lobsterThe note at the end holds true, though picked crab or lobster is better folded in whole at the last minute than sieved; the texture is the point of paying for it.
"Bisque" in nineteenth-century American cookbooks meant almost any thickened, milk-based shellfish or fish soup, a long way from the classic French version built on pounded shells and rice. What makes this entry characteristic of Good Housekeeping is its frankness about purpose: it exists to use up the last of a can, "remains not large enough to re-serve in any other way." Canned salmon had become cheap and ubiquitous after the Pacific Northwest canneries scaled up in the 1870s and 1880s. Since a can once opened had to be finished quickly with no refrigeration to speak of, recipes like this one — soup as a way to stretch a remnant into a meal — were a practical necessity rather than an economy stunt.