Boiled Salmon
Sew as many pounds as desired up in a cheese-cloth bag, and boil for a quarter of an hour to the pound, in slightly salted water. When done, take out and lay upon a dish, being careful not to break the fish.
A workable method wrapped around one timing that no modern cook should follow. The cheesecloth bag is the good idea here; the quarter of an hour to the pound is not.
- The timing is the problemFifteen minutes per pound will take a 3 lb piece of salmon well past dry and chalky. Reckon instead on 8-10 minutes per inch of thickness at a bare simmer, and pull the fish at 120-125F at the thickest point for a moist centre, 130F if you want it firmly opaque throughout.
- Do not actually boil itWater at a rolling boil shreds the flesh, forces out white albumin, and makes the skin split. Bring the pot to a boil, slide the fish in, then drop the heat so the surface barely trembles.
- The cheesecloth bagThis is what keeps the fish in one piece, and it is worth reproducing. Wrap rather than sew, leaving long tails of cloth at each end as handles, or use a poaching rack or a doubled sling of foil. Some such support is what lets a whole cooked side be lifted out without breaking it.
- "Slightly salted water"About 1 tablespoon of salt per quart is right; the fish is in the water only briefly and needs the seasoning. A court bouillon with a bay leaf, a few peppercorns, sliced onion and a splash of white wine or vinegar costs nothing and improves the result considerably.
- QuantityAllow 6-8 oz of salmon per person on the bone, 5-6 oz off it. A whole 4-5 lb fish, or a 3 lb centre-cut piece, serves six to eight.
- ServingThe book stops at the platter, but boiled salmon of this period was commonly sent to table with a sauce. Egg sauce, drawn butter, or a caper or cucumber sauce are the usual period accompaniments, and cold poached salmon with mayonnaise is the other half of its usefulness.
Poaching a whole salmon in salted water and lifting it out in a cloth was standard practice in English and American kitchens through the nineteenth century, and it demanded no skill beyond patience and a large pot. Salmon was a summer fish in the Northeast and traditionally the centrepiece of the Fourth of July table in New England, served cold with egg sauce and new peas. The instruction to reckon time by the pound rather than by the thickness of the fish is a signature of the period: kitchen thermometers were not household objects, and a rule that could be recited was worth more than one that had to be judged.