Salmon, Collared
INGREDIENTS. -A piece of salmon, say 3 lb., a high seasoning of salt, pounded mace and pepper; water and vinegar, 3 bay-leaves. AVERAGE COST, 4s.
Split the fish; scale, bone and wash it thoroughly clean; wipe it and rub in the seasoning inside and out; roll it up and bind firmly; lay it in a kettle, cover it with vinegar and water ( vinegar, in proportion to the water); add the bay-leaves and a good seasoning of salt and whole pepper, SALMON, FRICANDEAU OF. and simmer till done. Do not remove the lid. Serve with melted butter or anchovy sauce. For preserving the collared fish, boil up the liquor in which it was cooked, and add a little more vinegar. Pour over when cold.
TIME. hour, or rather more.
A cooked, vinegar-pickled salmon in the old English "collar" style, meant to be eaten cold as often as hot. Two of the original proportions have been lost in printing, so read the quantities with care.
- The missing fractionsThe text as printed says "vinegar, in proportion to the water" and "TIME. hour" — the fractions have dropped out. Other printings of this recipe give roughly one part vinegar to two or three of water, and an hour for the time; but as it stands here the ratio is a judgement call rather than a stated instruction.
- Cook it far less than an hourAn hour of simmering will reduce 3 lb of salmon to dry flakes. A rolled and bound piece of that size needs about 25-30 minutes at a bare shiver, to an internal temperature of 145F (63C) at the centre of the roll; carry-over cooking continues as it cools in the liquor.
- "Kettle"A fish kettle — a long lidded pan deep enough to cover the fish with liquid. Any pot that takes the roll lying flat with an inch of liquor over it will do. The instruction not to lift the lid is about keeping an even, gentle heat, not about steam pressure.
- Collaring, practicallySplit and bone the fish but leave the skin on; season the flesh, roll it from the tail end with the skin outside, then bind at intervals with kitchen string or wrap in muslin and tie. Without binding the roll unwinds in the liquor and the whole point of the dish is lost.
- The keeping liquor is not a preserveBoiling up the cooking liquor with extra vinegar and pouring it over cold was a larder method for a cool stone room and a few days' use. It has no measured acidity, so refrigerate the salmon submerged in its liquor and eat within three days; do not treat it as a shelf-stable pickle or seal it in jars.
- SeasoningsPounded mace is the outer covering of nutmeg, ground; blade mace bruised in a mortar is the closest thing now. "Whole pepper" is peppercorns, added to the poaching liquor rather than the rub.
- Melted butterIn Beeton this means the standard English butter sauce — butter worked with a little flour and water into a smooth pouring sauce — not simply liquid butter. Anchovy sauce is that same base with anchovy essence or mashed anchovy stirred in.
- YieldA 3 lb piece before boning will serve six or so as a main course, more as part of a cold table. The 4s. average cost reflects a period when Scotch salmon was reaching London packed in ice.
To "collar" a fish or a cut of meat is to bone it, season it, roll it and bind it into a compact cylinder — the name is usually taken to refer to the collar or band that holds the roll together, though this is traditional explanation rather than settled etymology — after which it is cooked in an acidulated liquor and kept in it. The method was applied above all to eel, brawn, breast of veal and salmon, and it belonged to the same larder logic as potting and souse: vinegar, salt and spice bought a few days' grace for a fish that had none. Pickled salmon was a substantial trade in Britain, with the north-east coast and the Tweed sending kegs of vinegared salmon to London; collared salmon is the domestic, single-fish version of the same idea. By the time Beeton's compilers set it down, ice and the railways had made fresh salmon a more reliable town commodity, and recipes like this one survive in her pages partly as useful cold-table dishes and partly as inherited habit.