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Salmon Cutlets
Pick all the meat from a piece of cold salmon, and cut it into small pieces pound some lobster coral in a mortar with one-half ounce of butter, then rub it through a hair sieve. Put over the fire in a small saucepan one-fourth pint of milk and stir into it one ounce of flour, well rubbed into one ounce of butter; continue to stir it until it is so thick that it comes away from the sides of the pan. Add the coral butter, the salmon, a seasoning of cayenne pepper, salt and lemon juice; take it from the fire, let it cool. When sufficiently cold, make it into thick rolls, brush them over with beaten egg, roll them in a paper of breadcrumbs, and fry in boiling fat or lard. The cutlets should be served hot and garnished with fried parsley. Salmon Cutlets, English Style Cut off some slices of salmon and divide them into the shape of cutlets; sprinkle some pepper and salt over, put them into a saucepan with a small quantity of butter, and toss them over a good fire. Take out the cutlets when cooked, drain off the butter, place them on a dish and serve with ravigote sauce, or a sauce made as follows: Put three tablespoonfuls of veloute sauce into a saucepan, reduce it and add one egg, four ounces of butter, a little salt, cayenne, some finely-minced parsley, and half the juice of a lemon. Mix it together well, and it is ready for use.
Two dishes under one heading: a croquette made from leftover poached salmon, and plain sauteed salmon steaks with a butter sauce. Both assume a cook who already knows how to make a panada and a veloute.
- The quarter pint of milkA quarter pint is 4 fl oz by US measure, 5 fl oz by imperial; this is an American book, so most likely 4 fl oz, half a US cup. With an ounce each of flour and butter this gives a very stiff panada, which is the point: the mixture must be firm enough to shape when cold.
- Lobster coralThe roe of a hen lobster, dark green raw and scarlet once cooked. It is almost impossible to buy separately now. If you are not breaking down a whole female lobster, leave it out and accept a paler cutlet, or use a spoonful of tomato paste and a pinch of sweet paprika for colour, which is a substitution, not a reconstruction.
- Cook the panada properlyThe hinge of the first recipe. Stir over moderate heat until the paste genuinely pulls away from the sides of the pan in a mass, a good two to three minutes past the point where it thickens. Underdone, it tastes of raw flour and the cutlets will burst in the fat.
- Chill before shaping"Let it cool" means spread on a plate and refrigerate until cold and firm, at least an hour. Warm mixture will not take an even coating and will not hold its shape.
- "A paper of breadcrumbs"Most probably crumbs spread out on a sheet of paper to roll the cutlets in. The recipe does not say whether the crumbs are dry or fresh; press them on firmly.
- Boiling fat"boiling" is old shorthand for fat hot enough to seethe when the food goes in; fat breaks down long before it could actually boil. The recipe gives no temperature; by modern practice, deep fat at roughly 350-375F, three or four minutes to a deep gold, in batches.
- Fried parsleyDry sprigs plunged into the same hot fat for about ten seconds, until the sizzling stops, then drained. Wet parsley will spit violently.
- The English-style sauceThis is a warm emulsion: reduced veloute enriched with a whole egg and four ounces of butter beaten in off direct heat or over the barest simmer. Once the egg is in, do not let it boil or it will scramble and break.
- YieldNeither version is given a quantity. As a rough estimate, the panada as written would bind something like half a pound of picked salmon, enough for a few small cutlets.
Salmon cutlets belong to the great nineteenth-century economy of leftovers, where cold poached fish from Monday reappeared on Tuesday shaped, crumbed and fried. The word cutlet here describes only the form, a small rounded chop shape, not any cut of the fish, and the same trick was played with chicken, veal and lobster. Coral butter, roe pounded with butter and forced through a hair sieve, was a standard professional colouring and flavouring agent for fish sauces and forcemeats before it fell out of use, its disappearance often attributed to the decline of whole-lobster butchery in home and hotel kitchens. Oscar Tschirky, who ran the Waldorf dining rooms from its opening in 1893 and compiled this book in 1896, worked in a French idiom throughout, and the second, simpler treatment is labelled "English Style": sauteed plainly and sauced, rather than pounded, bound and fried.