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Salmon Cutlets
Mix equal parts of cold flaked salmon and hot mashed potatoes. Season with salt and pepper. Shape in form of cutlets, dip in crumbs, egg, and crumbs again, fry in deep fat, and drain. Arrange in a circle, having cutlets overlap one another, on a folded napkin. Garnish with parsley.
A tidy way to use up leftover poached salmon and mashed potato. The whole thing hinges on the mixture being dry and cold enough to hold its shape in hot fat.
- Chill before breadingThe recipe mixes hot potato with the flaked fish and shapes at once, but spreading the mixture on a plate and letting it cool and firm first makes the cutlets easier to shape and less likely to break up in the fat.
- Potato consistencyUse mashed potato made with little or no milk. Wet mash gives a paste that will not hold a cutlet edge, and butter-rich mash spits in the fryer.
- "Cutlets" means the shape onlyA cutlet here is a flattened tapered oval, thicker at one end, mimicking a chop. Some cooks stuck a short length of macaroni or a clean skewer in the narrow end to suggest the bone.
- Crumbs, egg, crumbsThe double coating is deliberate: the first layer of crumbs gives the egg something to grip on a damp surface. Beat the egg with a tablespoon of water so it coats thinly rather than clotting.
- Fat temperatureThe book gives no thermometer readings; deep fat for cooked mixtures is judged by a bread cube browning in about forty seconds, which is usually reckoned at somewhere around 375-390F. Cooler fat soaks in; hotter fat colours the crumbs before the centre heats through. Two to three minutes should be enough since everything inside is already cooked.
- SalmonCold cooked fresh salmon is intended, but drained tinned salmon works and was common in 1896 households. Pick out skin and the soft round vertebrae if you dislike them, and squeeze the fish fairly dry.
- The napkinThe folded napkin absorbs residual fat at table, a standard Victorian presentation. A rack over a warm plate does the same job less decoratively.
- YieldA pound of flaked fish with a pound of potato makes about eight cutlets, enough for four as a light main course with a green sauce or tartare.
Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book treats these among the made-over dishes, and made-over dishes like this were exactly what such recipes were for: yesterday's boiled salmon reappearing in a form respectable enough to serve to guests. Shaping minced food into a mock chop was a widespread genteel trick of the period, and the same trade in tinned Pacific salmon that had grown up along the Columbia River from the late 1860s meant a cook without leftovers could still make them from a can. The technique itself is straight croquette practice, which the Boston Cooking School taught as a system of proportions rather than a single recipe, so the pattern here repeats through the book with chicken, veal and lobster in place of the fish.