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Creamed Salmon
For this make the Cream Sauce heavier by using two tablespoons of butter and an equal amount of flour with a cup of milk. Into this put the contents of a can of salmon free from bones, skin and fat. Heat thoroughly, season with one teaspoon of Larkin Table Salt and one-eighth teaspoon of Larkin Pepper, and add two eggs beaten. Stir constantly until eggs are cooked, and serve at once. Sometimes a small amount of lemon-juice is added at the last to change the flavor.
A late-Victorian chafing-dish standby: a heavy white sauce, canned salmon, and beaten egg stirred in at the end to enrich and set it. The whole thing hinges on keeping the heat low once the eggs go in.
- The eggs are the hingeTwo beaten eggs into hot sauce will scramble if the pan is over direct high heat. Pull the pan to low heat, or off it entirely, and stir the eggs in steadily; they should thicken the mixture to the texture of soft custard, not break into curds.
- The sauce ratioTwo tablespoons butter and two tablespoons flour to one cup milk gives a distinctly thickened white sauce, about double the flour of a thin pouring sauce, which is what the recipe means by making it 'heavier.' Cook the roux a minute or two before adding milk so the mixture does not taste of raw flour.
- Larkin salt and pepperLarkin was a mail-order house whose brand names were written into its own recipe booklets. Any table salt and black pepper will do; one teaspoon of salt for a single can of salmon is generous, so season toward the end and taste.
- Canned salmon todayThe tall can runs about 14-15 oz and yields roughly 1.5 to 2 cups drained, though smaller 6-oz cans are also common. The soft vertebrae and skin in traditional pack are edible and a source of calcium, but the recipe wants them out; skinless boneless pouches or cans save the picking.
- Drain itThe packing liquid will thin the sauce and dull the flavor. Drain well, and if the salmon is very wet, press it lightly before flaking.
- The lemonA teaspoon or two of juice added off the heat is worth doing rather than treating as optional; it cuts the richness of butter, milk and egg. Add it after the eggs have set, since acid on hot dairy can encourage curdling.
- Yield and servingServes three to four. Dishes of this kind were commonly served on buttered toast points, split baking-powder biscuits, or in patty shells, and it does not hold well -- the egg stiffens on standing, which may be why the original says serve at once.
Creamed salmon belongs to the great age of the canned-fish supper, when Pacific Northwest canneries had made salmon one of the cheapest reliable proteins in an American pantry and cooks needed ways to stretch a tin into a family meal. The formula — white sauce, flaked fish, egg to bind, toast underneath — appears in dozens of household manuals of the period under names like salmon à la crème, creamed salmon, or salmon wiggle, and it was equally at home on a Sunday-night chafing dish and a weekday lunch table. The repeated brand names here mark this as a manufacturer's cookbook: the Larkin Company of Buffalo began as a soap maker and grew into a mail-order grocery empire that distributed recipe booklets promoting its own salt, pepper, extracts and baking goods to the housewives who bought its premiums. Recipes like this one were written to sell pantry staples as much as to feed anyone, which is why the seasoning is specified by brand and the fish is simply "a can of salmon."