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Salmon Salad Molds
Mix two cups of cold boiled salmon, one tablespoon of lemon juice, one teaspoon of chopped parsley, two drops of tabasco sauce, one tablespoon of granulated gelatine dissolved in a little water with enough cooked salad dressing to moisten. Fill small molds, place on ice for two or three hours, turn out on lettuce leaves and serve with cucumber cream sauce.-Stella A. Downing.
A cold gelatine-bound fish salad of the sort that filled luncheon menus from the 1890s through the 1950s. The instructions assume you know two things the book never spells out: what "cooked salad dressing" is, and how to bloom gelatine.
- Bloom the gelatine firstThis is the hinge. Sprinkle the tablespoon of granulated gelatine over about 2 tablespoons of cold water, let it stand 5 minutes until spongy, then warm it gently until fully clear and liquid before stirring it into the salmon. Added dry or half-dissolved, it leaves rubbery threads through the mold.
- Cooked salad dressingNot mayonnaise. Boiled dressing is a stovetop custard of egg yolk, flour or cornstarch, vinegar, sugar, mustard and milk — tangier and thinner than mayonnaise. Plain mayonnaise thinned with a spoonful of vinegar or lemon is the usual substitute; figure on ½ to ¾ cup to moisten 2 cups of fish.
- How much salmonTwo cups of flaked cooked salmon is roughly a 1 lb fillet, or two 6-7 oz cans well drained. Canned red or pink salmon was the everyday choice in this period and still suits the dish; pick out skin and the larger vertebrae, though the soft small bones mash in harmlessly.
- "Place on ice"Literally set the molds on ice, in the icebox; the refrigerator is the modern equivalent. The recipe allows two or three hours, which is enough for small molds, though a longer chill does no harm. The mixture should not sit at room temperature while you wait for it to set.
- Warm the gelatine mix, don't chill it, before fillingFill the molds while the mixture is still loose enough to press into the corners with a spoon, tapping to knock out air pockets. Rinse the molds with cold water first, or brush them very lightly with oil, and unmolding is far easier.
- UnmoldingDip the mold three or four seconds in hot water, run a thin knife round the rim, and invert onto the lettuce. Do not soak it — the surface melts and slumps.
- TabascoTwo drops is not a typo; at that dose the pepper reads only as a faint warmth behind the lemon. Add more if you like, but it changes the character.
- Cucumber cream sauceElsewhere in books of this kind it means grated, drained cucumber folded into whipped or sour cream with lemon, salt and sometimes a little grated onion. Salt the cucumber and squeeze it dry first or the sauce waters down on the plate.
- YieldSix small molds, or four generous ones — a luncheon or first course rather than a dinner.
Molded fish salads belong to the age when commercial granulated gelatine turned a laborious calf's-foot jelly into a pantry staple, and American cookbooks of the early twentieth century acquired a run of "salads" that were really cold set puddings served on lettuce. Canned salmon made the dish possible far from any coast: Pacific canneries were shipping large volumes east by the 1880s, and tinned salmon became one of the cheaper sources of good protein in an inland kitchen. The recipe carries a contributor's name, as recipes in collections compiled from readers' submissions typically do.