Home › Luncheon Dishes › Noodle Ring with Salmon
Noodle Ring with Salmon
3 C standard white sauce 1½ t Worchestershire sauce Dash of paprika Dash of pepper 2 C uncooked noodles 2 eggs beaten separately 1 small onion (chopped) Mrs. L. J. Ames. 1 small green pepper 2 hard-boiled eggs 1 small can peas 1 small can mushrooms 1 can salmon Parsley to garnish • Prepare white sauce, season with Worchestershire sauce, pepper and paprika. Cook and blanch noodles. Combine 1 C white sauce with noodles, add yolks of eggs and fold in beaten whites. Bake in moderate oven 30 minutes in well oiled ring pan. Saute onions and green peppers in butter and add with the other ingredients to the remaining white sauce. Turn noodle ring when done onto a chop plate and fill ring with mixture. Garnish with sliced hard-cooked eggs and parsley. Two cups of diced cooked ham and 1 small can asparagus tips may be used in place of the salmon and mushrooms. 1½ C rice 2 t salt 2 T butter
A church-supper luncheon dish of the 1930s-40s: a baked noodle custard turned out as a ring and filled with creamed salmon. The technique is sound, but the quantities assume pantry cans that have since changed size.
- The hinge: fold, don't stirThe ring holds its shape because beaten egg whites are folded into the noodle-and-sauce mixture. Fold gently and get it into the pan and the oven promptly, before the whites deflate in the warm sauce.
- Moderate oven350F. Thirty minutes should set the custard; test that the centre is firm to a light press before attempting to unmould.
- Standard white sauce'Standard' here most likely means a medium white sauce: about 2 tablespoons each butter and flour per cup of milk, so roughly 6 tablespoons of each for 3 cups. Season it well, since the noodles and canned goods are bland.
- Worcestershire quantityThe printed page gives 1½ teaspoons of Worcestershire, which is what our text now reads. Add it gradually and taste as you go, since brands vary in strength.
- Canned goodsCan sizes of the period were not standardised: a 'small can' of peas or mushrooms was often around 8 oz, with considerably less once drained, and canned salmon came both as a flat half-pound tin (about 7 3/4 oz) and a 1-lb tall can. A modern 15-oz can of peas, well drained, or thawed frozen peas will serve.
- Blanching the noodlesCook them just to tender, then rinse in cold water to stop the cooking and stop them clumping. Overcooked noodles will collapse into the custard rather than giving the ring structure.
- UnmouldingOil the ring pan thoroughly, including the centre column. Let the ring stand five minutes out of the oven, run a thin knife round both edges, then invert onto the serving plate in one movement.
- Salmon bonesCanned salmon of the era included the skin and softened vertebrae, and period cooks were commonly told these could be mashed in and eaten. Remove the skin and larger bone pieces if you prefer; flake the fish in large pieces so it does not disappear into the sauce.
- YieldThe recipe gives no pan size or serving count; a ring pan of about 9 inches and roughly six luncheon servings with a salad alongside is a reasonable reading.
Moulded rings like this one belonged to a whole family of American "luncheon dishes" that let a cook stretch a single can of fish across a table and present it with some ceremony. The ring pan, the chop plate and the garnish of sliced egg and parsley all did the work that a piece of expensive meat would otherwise have done, and the recipe's own footnote, offering ham and asparagus tips as a swap, shows how deliberately interchangeable such dishes were. Canned salmon had been a cheap national staple since the Pacific Northwest canneries scaled up in the late nineteenth century, and by the time community cookbooks like this one were compiled it was standard pantry stock in the Midwest. Contributions signed with a married name, as this one is, were the currency of the church fundraising cookbook: each cook lent her reputation to a dish other members of the congregation had probably already eaten at a parish luncheon.