Salmon, Crimped
Salmon is frequently dressed in this way, but must be very fresh, and cut into slices 2 or 3 inches thick. Lay these in cold salt and water for 1 hour; have ready some boiling water, salted and well skimmed; put in the fish, and simmer gently for 1 hour, or rather more should it be very thick; garnish the same as boiled salmon, and serve with the same sauces.
TIME. hour, more or less, according to size.
Note.-Never use vinegar with salmon, as it spoils the taste and colour of the fish.
A Victorian method for firming up very fresh salmon steaks before poaching. The one number in the text cannot be taken at face value.
- The missing fractionBoth the method and the TIME line originally read a fraction — almost certainly a quarter of an hour — which has dropped out of the text, leaving "1 hour" and "hour". An hour of simmering would reduce thick salmon steaks to dry flakes.
- What to do insteadSlip the steaks into barely trembling salted water off a rolling boil and allow roughly 10 to 15 minutes for slices 2 inches thick, less for thinner. The centre should be just set and still deep pink.
- "Crimped" explainedCrimping means slashing the sides of a very fresh fish to the bone, or cutting it into thick steaks, then soaking in cold salted water so the flesh contracts and firms. It only works on fish stiff from the water; on supermarket salmon that has already relaxed there is nothing left to contract, though the hour's brine still seasons it and helps it hold shape.
- Freshness is the whole premise"Must be very fresh" is not a flourish. Crimping was a way of showing off fish caught that morning; with anything older the point of the dish disappears.
- Well skimmedThe instruction to skim the salted water matters because the coagulated albumen that rises will otherwise settle back on the fish as grey curd. Skim as it comes up and keep the water below a boil.
- Garnish and saucesThe cross-references are to boiled salmon: parsley and slices of cut lemon, with lobster sauce, shrimp sauce, or plain melted butter. Hollandaise or a herbed mayonnaise suits it equally well.
- YieldAllow one 2-inch steak per person; depending on the size of the fish such a slice may run to 10 oz or more, and two of them make a main course for two with sauce and potatoes.
- The vinegar noteSound advice, and for the reason given — acid in the poaching water dulls the pink and blunts the flavour. Serve any acidity separately, in the sauce or as lemon at the table.
Crimping belongs to a period when fish arrived alive or barely dead, and it was practised on salmon, cod and skate at the great river fisheries and in London's fish trade. The fish was scored or cut across while still stiff and dropped into cold spring water, which made the flesh contract into firm, curdy flakes that Victorian cooks prized; the effect is generally understood to depend on the fish being still in rigor, which is why accounts insist on absolute freshness. Mrs Beeton's household readers of the 1860s could buy Severn and Scottish salmon brought in by rail and packed in ice, and the crimped slice - thick, pink, served with lobster sauce - was a familiar dish of the mid-Victorian dinner table. The warning against vinegar reflects a real difference of opinion in nineteenth-century cookery, where some writers recommended acidulated water for fish generally.