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Soufflé de Saumon
Ingredients.
Three Eggs. One gill of half-whipped Cream. Half a pound of Salmon.
Two ounces of Vienna Flour.
One ounce of Butter.
One gill of White Sauce.
Two Anchovies, boned and washed.
One ounce of live Spawn.
This entry gives quantities only — the method belongs to the general instructions for fish soufflés elsewhere in the book. Read it as a formula rather than a set of directions, and note that several of the ingredients no longer exist under these names.
- No method is givenThe proportions suggest a panada-based fish souffle: salmon worked with a flour-and-butter panada and white sauce, sieved, and baked or steamed in a buttered mould. Eggs are not listed at all, so anyone cooking from it will need a current souffle method for egg quantities and timings.
- A gillIn this British book a gill is a quarter of an imperial pint, 5 fl oz, or about 2/3 cup. Some American books of the same period use a gill of 4 fl oz, so err on the smaller side if the mixture looks loose.
- Vienna flourA very finely milled, high-gluten Hungarian or Austrian white flour sold across Britain in the late nineteenth century as a luxury grade. Plain white bread flour, sifted, is the nearest equivalent; its job here is simply to build a stiff panada.
- White sauceNot a bottled or packet sauce but a bechamel of the kitchen's own making, milk or fish stock thickened with a butter-and-flour roux. For a souffle mixture it wants to be fairly thick and cool before it goes into the fish.
- Live spawnVictorian shorthand for raw lobster coral, the roe of a hen lobster, dark when raw and turning scarlet on cooking. It was valued largely for colour, often pounded with butter and passed through a sieve, though it carries flavour too. It is difficult to buy separately today; the souffle works without it, at the cost of the tint.
- The anchovies"Boned and washed" points to whole salt-packed anchovies, which must be rinsed of their curing salt. Modern oil-packed fillets come already boned; salting varies by brand, so taste before adding more.
- OvenThe entry gives no oven instruction. By modern practice a souffle of this size is baked in a moderate oven, around 350F, and the mould may be stood in a shallow tray of hot water to keep the outside from setting before the centre rises.
- YieldHalf a pound of fish plus panada makes a small dish: probably two generous or three modest portions as a fish course.
This is the cooking of the late-Victorian English kitchen working in French dress, where a professional cook or an ambitious upper-servant was expected to produce a fish course in the Parisian manner between the soup and the entrees. A souffle de saumon is essentially a quenelle forcemeat lightened with whipped egg white -- the same sort of panada of flour, butter and white sauce that binds a fish quenelle, made to rise instead of poach. Salmon reached London by rail packed in ice, which is part of why it appears so often in the "dressed fish" chapters of these books. The two supporting ingredients are period detail: anchovies as a standard savoury sharpener, and lobster coral, sold as "spawn", kept on hand for colouring. "Vienna flour" is a reminder that flour was then graded and branded by origin, with the Austro-Hungarian mills holding the reputation for the finest white grades.