Salmon, Curried
INGREDIENTS.—Any remains of boiled salmon, 3/4 pint of strong or medium stock, 1 onion, 1 tablespoonful of curry-powder, 1 teaspoonful of Harvey's sauce, 1 teaspoonful of anchovy sauce, 1 oz. of butter, the juice of 1/2 lemon, cayenne and salt to taste. INGREDIENTS. -Any remains of boiled salmon, pint of strong or medium stock, 1 onion, 1 tablespoonful of curry-powder, 1 teaspoonful of Harvey's sauce, 1 teaspoonful of anchovy sauce, oz. of butter, the juice of lemon, cayenne and salt to taste. AVERAGE COST, exclusive of the fish, 9d.
Cut up the onions into small pieces, and fry them of a pale brown in the butter; add all the ingredients but the salmon, and simmer gently till the onion is tender, occasionally stirring the contents; cut the salmon into small square pieces, carefully take away all skin and bone, lay it in the stewpan, and let it gradually heat through; but do not allow it to boil long.
TIME. hour.
A Victorian way of using up cold poached salmon: a quick curry sauce built on fried onion and stock, with the fish warmed through at the end rather than cooked in it.
- The hingeThe salmon is already cooked. It goes in only to heat through over low heat for a few minutes; boiling it in the sauce breaks the flakes apart and dries them out.
- Quantities that need judgementSeveral amounts in the ingredient list have lost their fractions, including the stock, the butter and the lemon. For a curry of this style, roughly half a pint (about 1 cup) of stock, half an ounce of butter and the juice of half a lemon give the right balance against a tablespoon of curry powder.
- Curry-powderVictorian commercial curry powder was heavy on turmeric, coriander and fenugreek and comparatively mild. A modern madras blend is hotter, so taste before adding the cayenne. Frying the powder briefly with the onion rather than adding it to liquid removes the raw, dusty edge.
- Harvey's sauceA spiced anchovy-and-soy condiment, once as common as ketchup and no longer sold. Worcestershire sauce is the nearest substitute; a teaspoon of it plus the anchovy sauce covers both lines.
- Anchovy sauceBottled anchovy sauce is still available, but a scant teaspoon of anchovy paste or one mashed salted anchovy fillet does the same job of adding salt and depth.
- Stock"Strong" and "medium" correspond to the book's own graded stock recipes, which differ in richness. Use a well-flavoured fish or light chicken stock; a heavily reduced beef stock will overwhelm the salmon.
- TimingThe stated total time has lost its fraction. Reckon on about 20 minutes for the onion and sauce, then 5 minutes or so to warm the fish.
- YieldWith the remains of a side of boiled salmon, perhaps 12 oz of picked fish, this serves three to four with rice.
Curried fish was standard middle-class economy in nineteenth-century Britain, and Mrs Beeton's book is full of dishes designed around "any remains of" a joint or a poached salmon. Curry powder had been sold ready-mixed in London since the late eighteenth century, advertised there from the 1780s, and by Beeton's day it is often said to have been an ordinary store-cupboard item, used less to reproduce Indian cooking than to make cold leftovers palatable a second time. The bottled sauces here tell the same story: Harvey's sauce and anchovy sauce were the era's savoury shortcuts, adding the salt and depth a re-heated dish loses. The costing line, ninepence exclusive of the fish, is characteristic of the book, which was written for households keeping accounts as closely as they kept recipes.