Fish Salad
Boil four flounders or any medium sized fish; when done, take off the skin and pick out the bones, then shred very fine. Add pepper and salt, one tablespoonful mixed mustard, a half cup vinegar and half a pound butter and mix all well with the fish. Put into shallow pans, set in the oven and bake ten minutes. When cold put over it a little Worcestershire sauce, and sherry wine.--Miss. F. N.
Despite the name, this is closer to a potted fish spread than to a salad in the modern sense: cooked flaked fish bound with butter, vinegar and mustard, warmed through and served cold. Read it that way and the proportions make sense.
- Scale the butter to the fishHalf a pound of butter to four flounders is a very rich ratio, and it is likely what sets the mixture when cold. The yield of picked meat from four whole flounders will vary a good deal with their size; if your fish weighs less than the recipe assumes, cut the butter proportionally or the result will be greasy rather than firm.
- "Mixed mustard"This means prepared mustard already blended with liquid, not dry mustard powder. A smooth English or Dijon-style prepared mustard is the closest match.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given in the recipe. Around 350F for the stated ten minutes should be enough to melt the butter through the fish and marry the seasoning; the fish is already cooked, so this is a warming step, not a baking one.
- Shallow pansThe shallowness matters. The mixture should be no more than an inch deep so it heats evenly in ten minutes and chills quickly afterward.
- Pick the bones carefullyFlounder has fine pin bones along the lateral line that are easy to miss once the flesh is shredded. Work over a plate in good light and go through the flesh twice.
- The finishing liquidsWorcestershire and sherry go on cold and undiluted by heat, so they stay sharp. Start with a teaspoon of each and taste before adding more; the vinegar in the body of the mixture is already assertive.
- Keeping and servingTreat it as you would any cooked fish preparation: refrigerate promptly and eat within two days. It serves six to eight as a first course, spread on toast or crackers, or spooned onto lettuce.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, gathered contributions from some two hundred and fifty Virginia housewives, which is why so many entries close with a set of initials rather than a name. Recipes like this one sit at the tail end of the long European tradition of potting fish and meat: flesh cooked, pounded or shredded fine, seasoned hard with mustard, vinegar and spice, and set with a great deal of butter, which both preserved the mixture and made it spreadable. The word "salad" seems to have been used fairly loosely in nineteenth-century American cookbooks for almost any cold, dressed, chopped dish. Flounder was an obvious choice for a Tidewater household, being abundant and mild enough to carry the Worcestershire and sherry that give the dish its final, distinctly Anglo-Virginian seasoning.