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Scalloped Salmon
1 can salmon Butter 1 tablespoon flour Salt and pepper Place in baking dish one layer of salmon. Sprinkle with flour; add small pieces of butter, pepper and salt; then other layers until the dish is full; cover with cracker crumbs; heat and bake in the cooker about one hour. Use two radiators.
A fireless-cooker recipe, which means the original assumed a well-insulated box and heated soapstone or cast-iron discs rather than an oven. Everything about the timing follows from that, so the conversion is mostly a matter of putting the heat back.
- "Two radiators"The radiators were the discs of soapstone or iron that came with a fireless cooker; they were heated on the range until very hot and set above and below the dish inside the insulated chamber. Two meant a hotter, faster cook than one, and the hour allowed for the fact that the temperature was falling the whole time.
- Oven equivalentIn a conventional oven this is a moderate 350F for 25 to 30 minutes, until the top is browned and the centre is steaming. Do not give it an hour; there is nothing raw in the dish and the salmon only dries out.
- "Heat and bake"This probably means the assembled dish was brought up to temperature on the stove top before going into the insulated chamber, since the box itself supplies no heat beyond what the radiators carry in. If you are using an oven, the step is unnecessary.
- The can of salmonPeriod canned salmon came packed with the skin and vertebrae in; some cooks mashed them into the fish, others picked them out. A standard tall can was around a pound, so two of today's 6 to 7.5 oz cans, drained, is the right quantity for a small baking dish.
- It needs liquidA tablespoon of flour sprinkled between layers with little to hydrate it risks staying chalky. The recipe calls for no liquid, but comparable scalloped dishes add milk; about a cup poured over the assembled layers before the crumbs go on will let the flour and butter thicken into a sauce as it bakes.
- Cracker crumbsCrushed soda crackers, not the sweetened graham sort. Toss them with a little melted butter or they will scorch dry in an oven, which the gentle fireless cooker would never have done.
- YieldAbout four servings from two small cans in a 1-quart dish, though the recipe only says to fill the dish.
Fireless cookery was a brief but genuine enthusiasm in American households between roughly 1900 and the 1920s. The cooker was an insulated box in which stone or metal discs, heated on the range, were sealed in with the food; the appeal was fuel economy and, in summer, a kitchen that stayed cool. Canned salmon was a natural partner to it, since the Pacific canneries had by then made tinned fish one of the cheapest sources of protein in the country and it required no cooking, only heating through.