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Salmon Loaf
2 cups salmon 1 cup soft bread crumbs 2 eggs 3/4 cup milk 1 small grated onion 1/2 chopped green pepper 1 teaspoon salt pepper 1 tablespoon lemon juice 1 tablespoon each cornmeal and melted butter Remove bones and skin from salmon flakes and drain, saving liquor for the sauce. Mix all ingredients together, mold in loaf, pack into well greased shallow mold. Bake 40 minutes at 375 degrees F., moderate oven.
A canned-salmon loaf of the type that anchored inexpensive Sunday dinners between the wars. The quantities are sound and the oven temperature is already given in degrees, so very little translation is needed.
- How much canned salmonTwo cups of flaked salmon is roughly the drained contents of two tall cans (about 7.5-7.75 oz each) or one 14.75-oz can. Fresh cooked salmon can be substituted, though canned fish tends to carry more moisture into the mix.
- The bones are optional to removeThe recipe assumes the soft vertebrae of canned salmon should be picked out. They are edible, calcium-rich and mash to nothing when worked into the crumbs; skin is worth discarding for texture.
- Save the liquorThe recipe directs that the drained canning liquid be kept 'for the sauce,' though no sauce is given with it here. A plain egg or white sauce thinned with a few tablespoons of that liquor would suit.
- Soft crumbs, not drySoft bread crumbs means crumbs torn or grated from fresh bread with the crust off. Dry or packaged crumbs will absorb far more of the three-quarter cup of milk and give a dense, pasty loaf; if that is all you have, use about two-thirds of a cup.
- The moldA shallow mold here means a small loaf pan or a shallow baking dish, well greased. Depth matters: a deep, narrow pan will leave the center underset at forty minutes.
- Doneness375F is correctly described as moderate. The loaf is done when the center is firm to a light press and registers 160F, which will be at or near the stated forty minutes in a shallow pan.
- Rest before slicingLet the loaf stand five to ten minutes out of the oven. Cut straight from the heat it tends to crumble rather than slice.
- YieldServes four to six as a main course.