Home › Salads › Salmon with Cucumber Dressing
Salmon with Cucumber Dressing
1 can salmon, picked and broken into pieces. 1 tablespoon gelatin, soaked in 1/4 cup cold water. 1 teaspoon made mustard. 1 teaspoon salt. 2 teaspoons sugar. 3 egg yolks. 2 tablespoons vinegar. 1 cup rich milk. Put milk in boiler. Beat other things together and add to milk. Cook until thick. Add gelatin to hot mixture. Lightly fold in salmon and pack in mold that has been dipped in cold water. Serve with cucumber dressing.
A molded salmon custard set with gelatin — one of the mainstays of the American salad course between the wars. The hinge is the custard: it has to thicken without curdling, because there is no flour or starch here to protect the yolks.
- "Boiler" means double boiler"Boiler" here almost certainly means the double boiler, a common fixture in kitchens of the period. Use a heatproof bowl over barely simmering water; over direct heat a three-yolk custard with no starch in it will scramble very quickly.
- Cook to temperature, not to time"Cook until thick" means the custard coats the back of a spoon, around 175-180F. Take it off the heat there — the acid from the vinegar makes it curdle more readily than a plain custard.
- Made mustardThis is prepared mustard from the jar, not dry mustard powder. A smooth yellow or mild Dijon is closest to what was meant.
- Rich milkWhole milk at minimum; half-and-half is nearer the intent. Skim milk will give a watery, rubbery set.
- The gelatinOne tablespoon is roughly one envelope of modern powdered gelatin, a little more if anything, and against the cup of milk and quarter cup of soaking water here it will give a firm set that unmolds cleanly. Soften it in the cold water for five minutes, then stir it into the custard while the custard is still hot enough to dissolve it completely; undissolved grains show up as gritty streaks.
- Canned salmonA period can was about one pound; today's standard is 14.75 oz, which is close enough. Drain it, and pick out the vertebrae and skin if you want a smooth mold — the soft bones are edible, and the recipe's "picked" suggests going over the fish before it is broken up.
- Chilling and unmoldingThe recipe gives no time. Allow at least four hours, preferably overnight. The cold-water rinse of the mold is what lets it release; dip the filled mold briefly in warm water and invert onto a chilled plate.
- Serving and yieldServes four to six as a salad course. Keep it refrigerated until the moment it goes to the table — a dairy-and-fish mold left standing on a buffet is the classic way to spoil an otherwise sound dish.
- The cucumber dressingNot given on this page. A common period version is peeled, seeded cucumber grated and pressed dry, folded into whipped cream or mayonnaise with a little vinegar and salt. Draining the cucumber thoroughly is what keeps it from turning to soup.
Mary A. Wilson wrote for the Ladies' Home Journal and built her reputation during the First World War teaching American households to stretch and substitute; her New Cook Book collects that practical, thrifty approach for the years just after. A molded salmon salad is a good example of it — the fish is canned, the binder is a cheap custard rather than a quantity of mayonnaise, and the whole thing is made a day ahead. Canned Pacific salmon had become one of the most reliable inexpensive proteins in the American pantry by this date, shipped east from Alaskan and Columbia River canneries in enormous volume, and cookbooks of the era treat it much as later ones treat canned tuna. The gelatin mold itself is often said to have been near the height of its prestige in these years: commercially milled powdered gelatin had made the technique easy, and a salad that arrived at the table holding a shape is generally taken to have signalled a competent kitchen.