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Salmon Loaf (With Egg Yolks)
Take one can of salmon, drain off the juice, chop fine. Add yolks of four eggs beaten very light, one-half cup of grated bread crumbs, four tablespoons of melted butter, one-half teaspoon of pepper (scant), one-half teaspoon of salt, and a little finely chopped parsley. whites of eggs stiff and add last. Put in buttered pan and bake half an hour.
A straightforward canned-salmon loaf lightened with beaten egg whites, of the kind that filled American supper tables once Pacific canneries made salmon cheap. The original assumes you know the oven and the pan size, so both need filling in.
- Oven temperatureNone is given, and the recipe uses no oven-heat term at all. A moderate oven, around 350F, suits a loaf of this composition. Half an hour implies a fairly shallow pan; a deeper loaf pan will need longer.
- The hinge: fold, do not stirThe whites are beaten stiff and added last, which is what makes this a loaf rather than a paste. Fold them in with a spatula in two additions and stop while streaks are still faintly visible; stirring them through collapses the air and you get a dense brick.
- The garbled line"whites of eggs stiff and add last" is a typesetting drop. It should read "beat the whites of eggs stiff." Use the whites of the same four eggs whose yolks went in earlier.
- Canned salmon then and nowPeriod cans held bone-in, skin-on pink or red salmon packed in its own liquor. The soft vertebrae mash in and add calcium; leave them unless you dislike the texture. The recipe says only "one can"; a modern 14.75-oz can is the nearest standard equivalent, and two 6-oz cans will give noticeably less.
- Grated bread crumbsMost likely crumbs grated from a stale loaf rather than a commercial product. Half a cup of dried crumbs is the target; fresh soft crumbs will need closer to three-quarters of a cup to absorb the same moisture.
- ButterFour tablespoons is generous by modern taste for this quantity of fish. Three is ample, and the loaf still slices cleanly.
- DonenessThe centre should register 160F and feel set, not wobbly. Let it stand five minutes before cutting or it will crumble.
- Yield and servingServes four as a main course, six as a light supper dish. A white or egg sauce is a common period accompaniment for such loaves, and a squeeze of lemon does the same work.
Salmon loaf belongs to the first great age of canned food. Commercial salmon canning began on the Sacramento in the mid-1860s and moved north to the Columbia River soon after, and within a generation tinned salmon was one of the cheapest sources of protein available to inland American households that had never seen a fresh fish. Cookbooks of the period responded with many ways to stretch a single can: croquettes, scallops, timbales, and loaves like this one. The parenthetical title, "With Egg Yolks," most likely distinguishes it from other salmon loaf recipes nearby. The stiffly beaten whites do the work that a modern cook might expect from a binder or a leavening agent.