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Mushroom Sauce
1 can mushrooms cut in halves 3 tablespoons shortening 2 tablespoons flour 1 1/2 cups milk 1/2 cup salmon liquor 1/2 diced pimiento 1 chopped onion salt 12 stuffed chopped olives dash celery salt Few drops Worcestershire sauce Fry onion in shortening, add mushrooms and sear. Sprinkle flour over onion and cook few minutes. Add milk and simmer 10 minutes, gradually adding liquor from salmon, stir well. Add other ingredients. Pour over loaf when served and garnish with sliced lemon and parsley chopped fine.
A white sauce built on canned goods, meant to be spooned over a salmon loaf. It only works if you have the loaf's canning liquid on hand, so open and drain the salmon before you start the sauce.
- Salmon liquorThis is simply the liquid drained from the can of salmon used for the loaf. A standard can yields roughly 1/2 cup; if it falls short, make up the difference with milk or fish stock rather than water.
- Canned mushroomsCan sizes varied; about 4 oz drained is a reasonable reading of 'one can'. Drain them well and pat dry, or the searing step steams instead. Fresh cremini, sliced thick, work in the same quantity and taste better.
- ShorteningIn a savoury sauce of this era shortening means butter, lard, or vegetable shortening interchangeably. Butter is the sensible choice here.
- Roux ratioThree tablespoons fat to two of flour is fat-heavy for 2 cups of liquid, so the finished sauce is loose and may look slightly broken. Cutting the fat to two tablespoons gives a cleaner, thicker sauce.
- Cook the flourThe few minutes after the flour goes in is the step people rush. Keep it moving over medium heat until it smells nutty rather than pasty, then add the milk gradually so it does not lump.
- Salt lastTwelve chopped stuffed olives, celery salt, Worcestershire and salmon liquor are all salty. Taste before adding any of the listed salt.
- PimientoHalf a pimiento means half of one whole canned sweet red pepper, about two tablespoons diced. A piece of jarred roasted red pepper is the same thing.
- YieldAbout 2 1/2 cups, enough to nap a loaf serving six to eight. It thickens as it stands; loosen with a splash of milk before it goes to the table.
Sauces like this one belong to the moment when the American home cook's pantry was reorganised around the can. Canned salmon, canned mushrooms, bottled pimientos and stuffed olives were all cheap, shelf-stable and faintly glamorous in the early decades of the twentieth century, and the fashion was to combine them for colour as much as flavour: red pepper and green olive flecked through a white sauce, finished with lemon and parsley. Thrift is built in, since the liquid drained from the salmon can becomes the sauce's stock rather than going down the drain.