Salmon, Boiled
INGREDIENTS.- 6 oz. of salt to each gallon of water; sufficient water to cover the fish. AVERAGE COST, in full season, 1s. 4d. per lb.
Scale and clean the fish, and be particular that no blood is left inside; lay it in the fish-kettle with sufficient cold water to cover it, adding salt in the above proportion. Bring it quickly to a boil, take off all the scum, and let it simmer gently till the fish is done, which will be when the meat separates easily from the bone. Experience alone can teach the cook to fix the time for boiling fish; but it is especially SALMON AND CAPER SAUCE. to be remembered, that it should never be under-dressed, as then nothing is more unwholesome. Neither let it remain in the kettle after it is sufficiently cooked, as that would render it insipid, watery and colourless. Drain it, and if not wanted for a few minutes, keep it warm by means of warm cloths laid over it. Serve on a hot napkin, garnish with cut-lemon and parsley, and send lobster or any other sauce liked, and a dish of dressed cucumber, to table with it.
TIME.-8 minutes to each lb. for large thick salmon; 6 minutes for thin fish.
SEASONABLE from April to August.
Note.-Cut-lemon should be put on the table with this fish; and a little of the juice squeezed over it is regarded by many persons as a most agreeable addition. Boiled peas are also, by connoisseurs, considered especially adapted to be served with salmon. some To Choose Salmon. To be good, the belly should be firm and thick, which may readily be ascertained by feeling it with the thumb and finger. The circumstance of this fish having red gills, though given as a standing rule in most cookery-books, as a sign of its goodness, is not at all to be relied on, as this quality can be easily given them by art.
A Victorian salt-water poach for a whole fish, written when salmon came in at eight or ten pounds and the kitchen owned a vessel long enough to hold one. Most of it still works; the timing is the part modern practice has moved away from.
- The hinge: never let it boilThe hinge: bring it up, then hold it back -- The recipe does say "Bring it quickly to a boil, take off all the scum," but the cooking proper is done at a bare shiver: "let it simmer gently". Salmon albumen sets hard and squeezes out as white curd if the water rolls, so once the scum is off hold the pan at around 160-180F.
- The brine6 oz salt per gallon is about 170 g to 4.5 litres, roughly 3.7 per cent — decidedly salty, but well short of a curing brine. It seasons the flesh; do not skip it and do not double it.
- Timing8 minutes per pound was calculated for a whole thick fish and will overcook a modern fillet or steak many times over. Cook to an internal temperature instead: 125-130F at the thickest point for a whole side or fillet, which is well past raw but still moist. The book's own test, flesh parting easily from the bone, lands closer to 145F and gives a drier fish than most cooks now want.
- "Never under-dressed"The warning reflects a period belief that undercooked fish was actively unwholesome, not a food-safety rule we would recognise. Commercially handled salmon is routinely eaten rarer than this today; the real risk the Victorians faced was fish of uncertain freshness in a kitchen with no refrigeration.
- The fish-kettleA long lidded pan with a perforated lifting trivet, so a whole fish can be raised out unbroken. A deep roasting tin with a rack, covered in foil and set across two burners, does the same job; for portions, any wide sauté pan.
- Starting coldThe fish goes into cold water, which lets the thin belly and the thick shoulder come up at closer to the same rate (though the book then says to bring it quickly to a boil). Worth keeping for a whole fish; unnecessary for even-thickness fillets, which can go into water already at temperature.
- ServingThe "hot napkin" is a folded linen cloth on the platter to absorb draining water. Lobster sauce and dressed cucumber are the period pairings; caper sauce, referenced in the stray line running through the text, and boiled peas are the other two.
- Choosing the fishThe advice on reddened gills is sound and still is: gills can be doctored. Judge instead by firm springy flesh, clear eyes and a clean smell. "Seasonable April to August" describes the wild netting season; farmed salmon is available year-round and is fattier, so it tolerates the poach a little better.
Boiled salmon was the standard grand-dinner fish of nineteenth-century England, and its short season shaped the calendar of the table. Its first appearances were a genuine event, and the price Mrs Beeton quotes, 1s. 4d. a pound in full season, was a substantial sum for a household buying a whole fish. The pairing with cucumber and with green peas that the note calls the mark of a connoisseur may owe something to a seasonal coincidence: all three arrived together in early summer. Lobster sauce, caper sauce and a squeeze of lemon all do the same work, cutting an oily fish with acidity or salt. The instruction to make sure "no blood is left inside" is a reminder that fish arrived at the kitchen door whole and ungutted, and that the first task belonged to the cook rather than the fishmonger.