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Fish Salad
1 pound haddock or other fish 2 tablespoons oil 1 tablespoon vinegar 1 cup chopped celery Lettuce Mayonnaise Wrap the haddock in a clean cloth and boil it for ten minutes in salted water. The remains of almost any cold fish may be used in this way very satisfactorily, but the salad is more successful when made of fish that will flake nicely, such as salmon, cod, haddock, or halibut. Canned salmon will also make a very good salad. Remove the bones, pick the fish into fine bits while hot, turn over it oil mixed with vinegar and set away in a cold place. When about to serve, chop celery and add to the fish. Arrange crisp white leaves of lettuce in cup shapes on a platter, using one or two leaves for each, then lay one spoonful of the mixture in each cup and pour over it one spoonful of mayonnaise.
A plain poached-fish salad of the kind that turned Monday's leftovers into Tuesday's lunch. The one step worth respecting is dressing the fish while it is still hot, which is what makes the difference between a bland salad and a seasoned one.
- Dress it hotWarm flakes absorb the oil and vinegar; cold ones sit in it. Pick the fish apart and pour the dressing over the moment it is cool enough to handle, then chill.
- The clothWrapping the fillet in a clean cloth (cheesecloth or a thin kitchen towel) keeps it whole so it can be lifted out without collapsing. A poaching basket or a wide slotted spatula does the same job.
- Ten minutes is for a thick pieceA 1-pound haddock fillet of ordinary thickness is done in 5 to 8 minutes at a bare simmer, and modern practice is to keep the water below a rolling boil so the flesh does not toughen. Cook until it flakes at the thickest point, no longer.
- Salted waterNo quantity is given; about 1 tablespoon salt per quart of water seasons the fish without curing it. Bay leaf, peppercorns and a slice of onion are period-appropriate additions.
- ProportionsTwo tablespoons oil to one of vinegar is a 2:1 dressing, sharper than a modern vinaigrette. Cider or white wine vinegar suits fish better than distilled.
- Canned salmonStill works. Canned salmon of this period was packed with skin and bones included, as much of it still is. Drain it well, discard skin, and crush the soft vertebrae into the mixture or remove them as preferred.
- MayonnaiseA cookbook of this vintage assumes homemade mayonnaise, which is raw-egg based and eaten uncooked. Use commercial mayonnaise, or a pasteurised-egg version, if serving anyone who should avoid raw egg.
- YieldOne pound of fish with a cup of celery fills six to eight lettuce cups as a first course, or serves three to four as a light main dish.
Cold cooked fish bound with oil, vinegar and mayonnaise was a staple of American household economy well before it became a "salad course." The instruction that "the remains of almost any cold fish may be used" is the real point of the entry: fish was bought fresh, cooked whole, and the leftovers had to go somewhere before iceboxes could hold them long. The preference for salmon, cod, haddock and halibut is a preference for large-flaked white and pink fish that break into clean pieces rather than mush. Canned salmon, cheap and widely distributed from the Pacific canneries by the end of the nineteenth century, made the dish possible in inland kitchens year-round, and its appearance here alongside fresh haddock is characteristic of budget-minded household recipe collections of the period.