Steamed Salmon
Wrap four pounds of salmon in a piece of cheese cloth. Set in a plate in a steamer and cook until fish separates from bone - from forty-five to sixty minutes, according to thickness of fish.
All other fish may be steamed in the same way.
A four-pound piece of salmon steamed whole in cloth is a Sunday-dinner scale of cooking that has largely disappeared, but the method itself is sound and translates directly to a modern steamer or a covered roasting pan with a rack.
- The cheesecloth is structuralIts only job is to let you lift four pounds of cooked, fragile fish out in one piece. Leave long ends hanging over the plate to use as handles, and wet the cloth first so it does not stick.
- What "a plate in a steamer" meansThe fish sits on a plate held above simmering water, so it is cooked by steam rather than poached. Any deep pot with a rack and a tight lid works; the water must not touch the plate.
- The timing is for a whole thick pieceForty-five to sixty minutes suits a four-pound center cut or whole small salmon several inches thick. A modern one-inch fillet is done in eight to ten minutes, and the old timing would leave it dry and chalky.
- Use a thermometer, not the bone test"Until fish separates from bone" gives salmon cooked through to about 145F, firm and fully set. Modern practice often pulls salmon nearer 125-130F at the thickest point, where it is still translucent at the center.
- Salmon in 1907This would have been wild fish, leaner and firmer than farmed Atlantic salmon. Farmed fillets carry more fat and cook faster; check them early.
- ServingFour pounds of fish on the bone serves eight to ten. Steamed salmon of this period was sent to table hot with egg sauce, hollandaise or drawn butter, or chilled and served with cucumber and mayonnaise.
- "All other fish may be steamed in the same way"True as far as it goes, but adjust by thickness rather than weight. Flat fish and thin fillets need only a few minutes; a thick cod or haddock steak behaves much like salmon.
Lowney's Cook Book (1907) was written by Maria Willett Howard for the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and it surrounded its chocolate recipes with a complete general household manual. A four-pound salmon steamed whole and sent to table with egg sauce was a fixture of New England dinners, and in the Northeast it carried a seasonal association with early summer, when the runs came in; salmon with peas was long treated as the traditional Fourth of July dish in that region. Steaming was recommended over boiling in period cookery writing on the grounds that it kept the flesh from breaking up and did not leach flavor into the water, an argument you still hear made for poaching at a bare simmer.