Salmon Loaf
Salmon loaf, when made with care, is really a high class dish and does not deserve the sneers sometimes accorded it. For this open 1 pound can and empty out the fish, freeing it from skin and bones, and separating in fine flakes with a silver fork. Mix with 2 well-beaten eggs, 1 cupful of fine stale bread crumbs, salt and white pepper to season, 1 tablespoonful of lemon juice, 1 tablespoonful of melted butter, and 1 tablespoonful of finely chopped parsley. Pack into a well buttered mold and steam from one hour to one hour and a half, according to thickness.
A straightforward canned-fish loaf that depends almost entirely on gentle cooking and dry crumbs. Two details in the original need translating, and the steaming time is generous by modern standards.
- The canA "1 pound can" of salmon was the standard tall can of its day. Today's equivalents run 14.75 oz (bone-in, skin-on) or 15 oz; either works with no change to the other quantities. Drain it, and reserve a little of the liquid in case the mixture seems dry.
- Skin and bonesThe instruction to remove them is aesthetic, not safety. The soft vertebrae in canned salmon are edible and are the main reason canned salmon is a calcium source — mash them in if you would rather not lose them. The skin is worth discarding for texture.
- The silver forkSilver was probably specified because steel of the period could impart a metallic taste or discolour pale flesh, the reason usually given in period cookbooks for silver knives and forks with fruit and fish. Stainless steel is fine.
- Bread crumbs"fine stale bread crumbs" most likely means crumbs from day-old bread rather than the dry, sandy commercial kind, though period usage varies. Dried packaged crumbs absorb considerably more liquid, so use rather less than the full cup or the loaf will be pasty.
- The mold and the steamingAny straight-sided ovenproof or metal mold that will hold about a quart; butter it well and cover the top with buttered parchment or foil so condensation does not run in. Set it on a rack in a covered pot with water reaching partway up the sides, and keep the water at a bare simmer.
- TimeThe shorter hour will generally be enough for a shallow loaf, the full hour and a half only for a deep mold, which is what the original's "according to thickness" is pointing at. Cook to about 160F at the centre -- beyond that the eggs tighten and weep, and the loaf turns dense and dry.
- Turning outLet it stand 10 minutes off the heat before unmolding, or it will crack. Run a knife around the edge first.
- Yield and servingServes about four as a main course. Loaves of this kind were commonly sent to table with a sauce -- a plain white sauce, an egg sauce, or drawn butter with lemon -- and it is equally good cold and sliced the next day.
Canned salmon was one of the great cheap proteins of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the Pacific Northwest and Alaskan canneries were shipping it east in enormous quantities by the 1880s, and a tall can kept for a long time on a shelf in a house with no refrigeration. That abundance helps explain why the author opens defensively -- the dish had a reputation for cheapness, and "sneers sometimes accorded it" is her own acknowledgement of it. The dish belongs to a large family of Victorian and Edwardian steamed and baked loaves, in which flaked fish or minced meat was bound with egg and crumbs, packed into a mold, and cooked gently so it could be turned out whole and sliced at table. Steaming in a mold gives a moister, more delicate result than an oven pan.