Important: Safety Warning
This page describes home-canning methods from before the causes of botulism were understood. Canning low-acid foods without a pressure canner, as described here, can allow the growth of Clostridium botulinum, whose toxin is among the deadliest known. Follow current USDA home-canning guidelines instead.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
Home › Salmon and Salmon Trout › Salmon and Salmon Trout
Salmon and Salmon Trout
142. To BOIL. - Clean it carefully, boil it gently, putting it in cold water, and take it out of the water as soon as done. Let the water be boiling if the fish is crimped or split in slices. If under-done it is very unwholesome. Serve with shrimp or anchovy sauce. Salmon takes nearly as long as meat, and for a large fish a quarter of an hour per pound will not be too much to allow. 143. SALMON CUTLETS are excellent, the fish being divided with a knife into slices across it, each being about three-fourths of an inch thick. They are then boiled in the same way as other fish, requiring about ten minutes more or less, according to the thickness of the slices. 144. TO BROIL. -Cut slices an inch thick, and season with pepper and salt; lay each slice in half a sheet of white paper well buttered, twist the ends of the paper, and broil the slices over a slow fire six or eight minutes. Serve with raw pickles and anchovy sauce. 145. To Pot.-Take a large piece, scale and wipe, but do not wash it; salt very well, let it lie till the salt is melted and drained from it, then season with beaten mace, cloves, and whole pepper; lay in a few bay leaves, put it close into a pan, cover it over with butter, and bake it; when well done, drain it from the gravy, put it into the pots to keep, and when cold cover it with clarified butter. 146. TO CURRY.-Broil slightly as above; then mix half an ounce of curry-powder to each pound of fish, with a good gravy or stock; stew gently in this for half an hour, and serve with rice as usual (see Curry, under Made-dishes). 147. To KIPPER.-Cut the fish down, take out the inside and roe. Rub the whole with common salt after scaling it; let it hang twentyfour hours to drain. Pound three or four ounces of saltpetre, according to the size of the fish, two ounces of bay salt, and two ounces of coarse sugar; rub these, when mixed well, into the salmon, and lay it on a large dish or tray two days, then rub it well with common salt, and in twenty-four hours more it will be fit to dry; wipe it well after draining. Hang it either in a wood chimney or in a dry place, keeping it open with two small sticks, or rub with brown pyroligneous acid. Kippered salmon is eaten broiled in paper, and only just warmed through, with egg sauce and mashed potatoes; or it may be boiled, especially the part next the head. 148. TO PICKLE. - After the salmon has been boiled as usual, let it drain till quite dry on a fish-drainer or cloth; then put it into some of the following pickle: - Take of the water in which the fish was boiled and vinegar equal quantities, to which add a few peppercorns, a little mace, and a very little allspice; boil for a few minutes, and let it stand till cool. The spice may be varied according to the taste; in twelve hours it is fit to be used; but it will keep for weeks in cool weather, or in the summer by the addition of a little ice occasionally. 149. TO COLLAR. - Split such a part of the fish as may be sufficient to make a handsome roll, wash and wipe it, and having mixed salt, white pepper, pounded mace, and Jamaica pepper in quantity to season it very high, rub it inside and out well. Then roll it tight and tie it up with broad tape, put as mnch water and one-third vinegar as will cover it, with bay-leaves, salt, and both sorts of pepper. Cover close, and simmer till done enough. Drain and boil the liquor quickly, and put on when cold. Serve with fennel. It is an elegant dish, and extremely palatable,
Nine numbered methods for one fish, ranging from a plain boil that still works to preserving methods that no modern kitchen should attempt. The boiling, cutlet, broiling and currying entries are sound in outline; the potting, kippering, pickling and collaring entries are not.
- The timing to ignoreA quarter of an hour per pound will give you dry, chalky salmon. Modern practice is roughly 10 minutes per inch of thickness at a bare simmer, pulled at 120-125F at the thickest point; a thick centre cut of a large fish is done in 15-20 minutes total, not an hour.
- Cold water versus boilingThe distinction is real and worth keeping. A whole fish started in cold water heats evenly and the skin does not split; slices and cutlets go into water already at a simmer so the surfaces set at once. Never let either come to a rolling boil.
- "Crimped"Crimping meant scoring a very fresh fish deeply to the bone, generally while it was as fresh as possible, to firm the flesh; period sources describe the crimped fish being steeped in cold water before cooking. It is a fishmonger's trick of the period, not something you can reproduce with a fillet from a chill cabinet.
- Broiling in paperSection 144 is en papillote over direct heat. Buttered baking parchment does the job of the "white paper"; six to eight minutes over a slow fire suits an inch-thick slice. "Raw pickles" here probably means uncooked pickled vegetables served alongside rather than a sauce, though the book does not gloss the term.
- Curry powder quantityHalf an ounce, about two tablespoons, per pound of fish is a heavy hand by current taste; start with half that and add. Half an hour of stewing will also break up the flakes, so 10-12 minutes in the sauce is plenty.
- Why the potted salmon (145) failsBaked fish sealed under clarified butter and kept unrefrigerated is a textbook anaerobic environment for Clostridium botulinum. Neither the salting nor the butter seal controls it, and the oven temperature and time are unstated. Potted fish today must be treated as a fresh product and refrigerated for days, not weeks.
- Why the kipper (147) failsThree or four ounces of saltpetre "according to the size of the fish" is an uncontrolled nitrate dose with no weight of fish to measure against; curing nitrate is now used in tightly specified fractions of a percent. The cure is also a cold cure followed by air-drying in a domestic chimney, with no step that reaches a safe temperature. The alternative given, brown pyroligneous acid, is a crude wood-tar distillate; only refined and purified versions of it are used in food today.
- Why the pickle and collar (148, 149) failThe pickling liquor is fish cooking water cut half-and-half with vinegar, too dilute and unmeasured to be relied on as a preservative, and the book proposes keeping it for weeks with the occasional lump of ice. The collar is simmered fish stored under its own boiled-down cooking liquor of water and one-third vinegar. Both are insufficiently acidified cooked-fish preserves held above refrigeration temperature. If you want cured, kippered or pickled salmon, use a current tested recipe.
The British Cookery Book treats salmon as a fish to be dealt with in bulk, and that is the point of this run of entries. Wild salmon ran the Severn, Tay, Tweed and Spey in numbers that made it seasonally cheap in the towns within reach of them, and a household or an inn might take delivery of a whole fish of fifteen or twenty pounds at once. Hence eight entries in all, four of them ways of putting the rest by: potted under butter, kippered in the chimney, pickled in its own liquor, collared into a roll to be sliced cold. The word kipper long predates its association with herring and is generally traced to the practice of splitting, salting and smoke-drying spent salmon after spawning; the herring kipper of the breakfast table is the later borrowing. Anchovy and shrimp sauce as the standard accompaniment reflects a British taste, well established by the middle of the nineteenth century, for pairing rich fish with something salt and savoury rather than merely buttery.