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Slice of Salmon Baked
Ingredients.
Two tablespoonfuls of Salad Oil.
One teaspoonful of chopped Parsley.
One Gherkin chopped fine.
One Shalot chopped fine.
One Anchovy chopped fine.
Half a teaspoonful of Cayenne Sauce.
Mix these all together and rub over both sides of a slice of salmon. Wrap the salmon in buttered paper and bake about half an hour. Serve in the paper.
Sole à la Maître d'Hôtel.
Ingredients.
One Sole, filleted.
One ounce of Butter.
Three quarters of an ounce of Flour.
Half a pint of Milk and Water.
A salmon steak in a herb-and-anchovy rub, baked in paper and brought to table still wrapped — an early en papillote. The only real difficulty is that a Victorian "slice" of salmon was cut thick, and the half hour given will overcook a modern supermarket steak.
- Time and temperatureNo oven heat is given, as is usual in books of this date. Bake at 400F and reckon roughly 10 minutes per inch of thickness: a 1-inch steak is done in 10-12 minutes, not thirty. Pull it at 125-130F at the thickest point, where the flesh has just turned opaque but still flakes in moist sheets.
- "Slice of salmon"This means a crosscut steak on the bone, from a whole fish, and in a period kitchen it might be 1 1/2 to 2 inches thick and weigh a pound — enough for two. A single modern steak or a thick centre-cut fillet portion serves one.
- Buttered paperParchment, generously buttered, is the direct equivalent; foil works but steams rather than roasts and dulls the herb rub. Fold the paper into a sealed parcel with a little air inside so the salmon cooks in its own steam, and serve it unopened as directed.
- Salad oilAt this period this generally meant olive oil, sometimes a light nut or seed oil. Either is fine here; the rub wants enough body to hold the chopped aromatics against the fish.
- ShalotAn older spelling of shallot. Chop it very fine — in a half-hour bake it would have softened, but at modern timings a coarse dice stays raw and harsh.
- Cayenne sauceProbably a bottled or home-made cayenne-and-vinegar pepper sauce. Half a teaspoonful of a modern hot sauce is about right; if you substitute dry cayenne, use a small pinch instead.
- AnchovyMost likely a whole preserved (salted) anchovy, rinsed and boned. One oil-packed fillet, chopped to a paste, does the same work; a scant half-teaspoon of anchovy paste is an acceptable stand-in.
- ServingOne modern steak per person. The rub is sharp and salty enough that no sauce is wanted, which is presumably why none is offered.
- The stray ingredients at the endThe list beginning "One Sole, filleted" belongs to the next recipe, Sole a la Maitre d'Hotel, whose method is not included here. Ignore it.
Baking fish in buttered paper was well established in nineteenth-century British and French kitchens under the name en papillote, and cookery writers liked it for the same reason cooks do now: the parcel traps steam and aroma, and the dish arrives at table with its scent intact. The rub -- gherkin, shallot, anchovy, parsley and a cayenne sauce -- gathers the components of a ravigote, pressed into service as a coating rather than a sauce. Salmon was a seasonal luxury before refrigerated transport, reaching Britain's cities from Scottish and Irish rivers in late spring and summer, and a recipe of this kind assumes a household buying a cut from a whole fish at the fishmonger rather than a pre-portioned fillet.