Creamed Salmon
1 can salmon 1 cup cream sauce Remove the salmon from the can; place it in a colander and wash under running water or scald with boiling water. Break into small pieces; stir into the hot cream sauce; bring all to a boil and serve in patty cups or on toasted bread or crackers.
A two-line recipe that assumes the cook already knows how to make a white sauce and owns a set of pastry shells. Both assumptions need a word of explanation.
- Cream sauce, unstatedThe book expects you to know the standard medium white sauce: 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour, 1 cup milk or thin cream, cooked until it thickens, seasoned with salt and pepper. Have it hot and smooth before the fish goes in.
- The washing stepEarly canned salmon carried a strong oily packing liquor and could pick up a metallic taste from the can, which is the likely reason the fish is rinsed or scalded here; the recipe itself gives no reason. Modern canned salmon does not need this; draining it well is enough, and rinsing washes away flavor along with the packing liquid.
- Bones and skinPeriod canned salmon included the soft vertebrae and skin, and standard packs still do, though skinless and boneless versions are now widely sold. They are edible and are the reason canned salmon is high in calcium. Pick them out only if the texture bothers you.
- Can size"1 can" in this period most often meant the tall one-pound can, though smaller flat cans were also sold. A modern 14.75 oz can is the nearest equivalent; two 6 oz cans will do at a slightly smaller yield.
- Bring all to a boilTake this loosely. The salmon is already fully cooked in the can, so it only needs heating through; a hard boil breaks the flakes into mush and can cause the sauce to thin or curdle. Fold it in and heat gently for a minute or two.
- Patty cupsThese are small baked pastry shells, the same idea as the vol-au-vent case sold frozen today. Toast, split biscuits, or rice serve the same purpose.
- SeasoningNothing is specified beyond the sauce. Salmon in cream wants salt, pepper, and something sharp: lemon juice, a spoon of chopped parsley, or a little dry mustard stirred into the flour and butter.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; one can and a cup of sauce will fill roughly four patty shells, or serve about three as a light supper dish.
Creamed salmon belongs to the era when canned Pacific salmon became one of the cheapest sources of protein in the American pantry. Canneries on the Columbia River and in Alaska were shipping salmon across the continent by the 1880s, and by the early twentieth century a can of salmon was a shelf-stable staple that could be turned into a hot dish in ten minutes. The recipe is really a formula: canned fish plus white sauce, served on toast or in a pastry shell, the same template that produced creamed chipped beef, creamed chicken, and creamed eggs. The instruction to wash or scald the salmon may record a quality of early canned goods that later processing largely eliminated.