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Special Dressing for Salmon Loaf
1 cup milk I well-beaten egg 1 scant tablespoonful 1 teaspoonful butter Salt and pepper corn-starch Heat milk, add corn-starch blended with cold water, and cook together one minute, or until sauce boils. Combine with egg, cook slightly, add salt, pepper, and butter. Pour over loaf and serve hot or cold.
The ingredient list has been scrambled by the book's two-column setting; read it as 1 cup milk, 1 well-beaten egg, 1 scant tablespoon cornstarch, 1 teaspoon butter, salt and pepper. It is a small white sauce thickened twice, once with starch and once with egg.
- The hingeOnce the egg goes in, the sauce must not boil. "Cook slightly" means holding it below a simmer, around 170-180F, stirring constantly until it just coats the spoon. A boil scrambles the egg and the sauce turns grainy.
- Temper the eggWhisk a few spoonfuls of the hot starch-thickened milk into the beaten egg before returning the mixture to the pan. Adding the egg straight to hot milk is what produces flecks.
- Blending the cornstarchSlurry the scant tablespoon of cornstarch in a little cold water before it goes into the hot milk. The recipe's minute of cooking, up to the boil, is what cooks out a raw starch taste.
- Butter last, off heatThe teaspoon of butter is for gloss, not body. Stir it in after the pan leaves the burner so it emulsifies rather than separating into a slick.
- "Scant"A scant tablespoon is a level one, just short of full — call it a shade under three teaspoons. A heaped spoon would give a noticeably thicker sauce than a pouring one.
- YieldAbout one cup. It thickens noticeably as it cools; if serving cold, thin with a spoonful of milk before it goes on the loaf.
- SeasoningSeason at the end and taste; the starch and egg both blunt the seasoning.
Left-over cookery of the early twentieth century leaned hard on the white sauce, because a bound sauce was what turned yesterday's cooked fish into something that could be sent to table without apology. Cornstarch here does the work flour would do in a béchamel, giving a clearer, glossier sauce with less cooking time; it had been a household staple since the mid-nineteenth century and was marketed for exactly these delicate sauces and puddings. The egg is the older technique, a liaison thickening in the French manner, and it makes for a richer version than the drawn-butter or plain cream sauce that would have been the default. Salmon loaf itself belonged to the canned-salmon era, when tinned fish and a mould made a cheap dinner.