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Salmon Patties
150. Scrape some Salmon very fine with a knife, season it very high with cayenne, nutmeg, salt, &c., rub in some fresh butter, and mix the yolk of an egg with it. It may be enclosed in puff paste, or made alone into cakes, SECT 3. SPECIAL DIRECTIONS FOR COOKING SEA FISH.
A raw-salmon forcemeat, bound with butter and egg yolk, meant either to fill small puff-pastry cases or to be shaped and fried as cakes. The original assumes you know how to finish it, so the cooking is the part you must supply.
- Cook it throughWhichever form you choose, the salmon goes into the pan or oven raw and must reach 145F / 63C in the centre. Small cakes take about 3 minutes a side in butter; filled pastry cases need the oven long enough to set the filling, not merely to colour the crust.
- Scraping the fishDrawing a knife blade across the cut face of a salmon fillet at a shallow angle lifts the flesh away and leaves sinew, skin and pinbones behind. It gives a finer, silkier paste than mincing. A food processor works, but pulse briefly: overworking turns the mixture pasty and it will weep fat when heated.
- "Season it very high"Georgian and early Victorian palates liked fish forcemeat assertively spiced. For 1 lb of scraped salmon, start at about 1/4 teaspoon cayenne, 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg and 1 teaspoon salt, then taste a pinch of the mixture cooked in a little butter before committing.
- Fresh butterThis means unsalted butter, as distinct from the salted and often rank keeping butter of the period. Around 2 oz, softened, to 1 lb of fish; it is the fat that keeps the patties from drying.
- Puff paste and patty cases"Patties" here are small pastry shells, not burgers. Bought puff pastry is a fair substitute; bake at 425F / 220C until the pastry is risen and deep gold, then check that the filling is set and hot at the centre.
- BindingOne yolk to a pound of fish is a light bind. If the mixture will not hold a shape for cakes, chill it for 30 minutes rather than adding more egg, which makes it rubbery.
- YieldA pound of scraped salmon fills roughly twelve small patty cases or makes eight cakes of about 2 oz each, enough for four as a first course.
Scraped-fish forcemeats of this kind appear in British cookery books from the late eighteenth century onward. Before mincing machines, drawing a knife across raw flesh was one way to obtain a smooth paste free of bone and sinew, though pounding in a mortar was also usual. Salmon was a seasonal luxury in much of the country but was abundant and cheap in Scotland and the north during the summer runs. "Patty" is usually derived from the French p\u e2té, probably influenced by the older English pasty, and in nineteenth-century usage it commonly meant a small pastry shell with a savoury filling rather than the flat cake the word suggests today. The alternative offered here, cakes without pastry, resembles the fried fish cake later familiar at British breakfast and supper tables.