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Smoked Salmon (Two tablespoonfuls of Salad)
Two tablespoonfuls of Salad Oil.
One tablespoonful of Lemon-juice.
One teaspoonful of chopped Parsley.
Mix the oil, lemon-juice and chopped parsley together; cut the salmon into slices about the eighth of an inch thick, and lay them for about ten minutes in the oil mixture; put them on a greased tin, cover over with buttered paper, and put them in the oven for about five minutes just to get hot through. Serve plain, or, with a little maître d'hôtel butter spread over each slice of salmon.
A savoury of warmed smoked salmon, and the whole thing hinges on restraint: five minutes in the oven is to take the chill off, not to cook the fish.
- Oven heatThe original gives no temperature and none can be inferred from the text. A moderate oven is the sensible modern reading, since the aim is only five minutes under paper to warm the slices; hotter and the flesh begins to firm and white albumin beads on the surface.
- Buttered paperBaking parchment, lightly buttered, does exactly what the Victorian kitchen paper did — it traps steam and stops the thin slices drying at the edges. Foil works but conducts heat faster, so check earlier.
- Slice thicknessAn eighth of an inch is a proper smoked-salmon slice, thin enough to warm through in the stated time. Thicker slices need the same short heating, not longer, or they turn dense.
- Which salmonThis means cold-smoked salmon, cured and sliced, not the flaked hot-smoked kind. Hot-smoked fillet has already been cooked and will simply dry out.
- No added saltCured salmon carries its own salt, and the marinade here is only oil, lemon and parsley, with no seasoning called for. Season the maître d'hôtel butter cautiously for the same reason.
- Maître d'hôtel butterButter creamed with chopped parsley, lemon juice and a little pepper, chilled firm and cut in thin pats. Lay it on as the salmon leaves the oven so it melts rather than cooks.
- Salad oilIn this period the phrase usually means olive oil, though other oils were also sold under the name. A light olive oil suits the dish better than a peppery estate oil, which will fight the fish.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no quantity of salmon and no yield; the dressing is two tablespoonfuls of oil to one of lemon-juice, enough to coat a few thin slices. The text offers only two finishes: plain, or with a little maître d'hôtel butter spread over each slice.
The savoury was a fixed feature of the late Victorian and Edwardian dinner, a small hot, salty mouthful served after the sweet and before dessert, and books of this kind carry whole chapters of them: anchovy toasts, devilled roes, cheese ramekins, and warmed smoked salmon like this one. Cold-smoked salmon was by then a commercial product rather than a domestic one, cured and sliced by fishmongers and smokehouses ut had a strong trade reputation — so the cook's job was simply to dress and warm it. The pairing with maître d'hôtel butter shows how thoroughly French professional practice had entered British high-class cookery: an English savoury of Scottish fish, finished with a compound butter named for the head of a French dining room.