Salmon Salad
Salmon, boned, skinned French Dressing Drain off liquid, pick up the fish and mix with the dressing or thin mayonnaise, set away for an hour and proceed as with lobster salad. Other fish salads may be prepared the same way.
A skeleton recipe of the kind common in early twentieth-century books, where one entry leans on another. The instruction to "drain off liquid" tells you this is canned salmon, not fresh.
- The hinge: the hour of marinatingDressing the fish and setting it aside for an hour is the whole point of the recipe. Canned salmon is bland and slightly metallic straight from the tin, and an hour in an acid dressing seasons it through. Do this in the refrigerator, not on the counter.
- What "French Dressing" meantIn this period the term means a simple vinaigrette shaken together from oil, vinegar, salt and pepper; period books give proportions anywhere from about two to four parts oil to one of vinegar. It is not the sweetened orange-red bottled dressing that took the name later in the century.
- "Proceed as with lobster salad"The companion recipe is not reproduced here. Fish salads of this type were typically finished by draining off any dressing that has not been absorbed, folding the fish with enough mayonnaise to bind, and piling it on crisp lettuce leaves, garnished as you like with hard-boiled egg, capers or olives. Keep the pieces in flakes rather than mashing them.
- Thin mayonnaiseHomemade mayonnaise of the era was stiff, and "thin" means let down with a little vinegar, lemon juice or cream to pouring consistency. Commercial mayonnaise thins the same way.
- Boned and skinnedCanned salmon still carries vertebrae and skin. Both are edible and the bones are a useful source of calcium, but the recipe wants them out; lift them away with a fork while flaking.
- Quantity and yieldNo amount is given. Canned salmon of this period was commonly sold in one-pound tins; a modern 14-15 oz can, or about a pound of cooked salmon, makes four modest salad portions and takes roughly a third of a cup of vinaigrette for the marinade.
- Fresh salmon worksFresh fish works -- The note that "other fish salads may be prepared the same way" applies equally to poached fresh salmon, cod or halibut, cooled and flaked. The recipe gives no cooking directions; for fish that will sit dressed for an hour before serving, cook it through to the recommended 145F internal temperature and chill it thoroughly before dressing.
Salmon salad belongs to the era when canned fish became a pantry staple. Commercial salmon canning began on the Sacramento and then the Columbia River in the 1860s and 1870s, and within a generation tinned Pacific salmon was cheap and available far inland, where fresh salmon was unthinkable. Cookbooks leaned on it heavily: it needed no cooking, kept well, and could be turned into a creditable luncheon dish with lettuce and mayonnaise. The cross-reference to lobster salad is telling. Lobster salad was the prestige version, and the salmon, and any other fish, is offered here as the same idea at a fraction of the cost.