Salmon, Potted
INGREDIENTS.- Salmon, pounded mace, cloves and pepper to taste; bay-leaves, butter.
Skin the salmon, and clean it thoroughly by wiping with a cloth (water would spoil it); cut it into square pieces, which rub with salt; let them remain till thoroughly drained, then lay them in a dish with the other ingredients, and bake. When quite done, drain them from the gravy, press into pots for use, and, when cold, pour over it clarified butter.
TIME.- hour.
This is a preserving recipe rather than a dish to eat the day it is made, and that is where it fails by current standards. The notes below explain what the instructions assume and why the method is no longer acceptable.
- The butter seal is the problemClarified butter poured over cooked fish creates an airless, low-acid, low-salt environment held at cellar or room temperature. Those are the exact conditions in which Clostridium botulinum spores germinate and produce toxin, and nothing in the method destroys spores. The toxin is undetectable by smell or taste.
- No measured cureThe salt is a rub that is drained away, not a weighed cure, and there is no nitrite, no acid and no recorded quantity of anything. Whatever margin of safety such pots had presumably depended on cold storage and prompt eating, but the recipe records neither.
- No temperature anywhere"Bake" and "when quite done" give neither oven heat nor internal temperature, and the pressing and potting are done warm. A modern potted fish recipe specifies a cooked core temperature, refrigeration throughout, and a short dated shelf life; use one of those instead.
- What the ingredients meanPounded mace is the dried outer coat of nutmeg, crushed to a powder; it and the cloves and bay were the standard potting spices, chosen because they hold up for weeks. Clarified butter is butter with the milk solids and water removed, which is why it was used for the seal rather than plain butter.
- Why water is forbiddenThe instruction to wipe the fish with a cloth rather than rinse it is not fussiness: the recipe states plainly that water would spoil it. In modern terms, added moisture dilutes the salt at the surface and leaves free water under the butter.
- The stated time is incompleteThe number has dropped out of the 'TIME.- hour' line in this text, so no baking time can be read from it with confidence.
Potting was a standard English way of carrying cooked meat and fish beyond a few days before domestic refrigeration: the flesh was seasoned, cooked dry, packed hard into an earthenware pot to exclude air, and capped with clarified butter. Salmon was an obvious candidate, since river catches in Britain arrived in gluts that no household could eat fresh, and potted salmon was sent as a gift and sold commercially in sealed pots. Beeton's book carries several versions of the technique across meat, game and shellfish, and they all share the same logic of spice, pressure and fat; potted shrimps is the best-known survivor of the family on modern British menus, though potted beef and similar preparations have not vanished entirely. What the entry records is a preserving economy, not a modern larder practice.