No. 2566

Salmon Pie

Pate de Saumon

Cut four pounds of fresh salmon meat into large fillets; season them with salt and pepper, and put them in a vessel with two or three raw truffles also cut in fillets; pour over a little Madeira wine and leave to macerate for one hour. With some raw pike or gurnet, the salmon parings, panada, butter or veal udder and egg-yolks prepare a delicate forcemeat (No. 90), and when strained place it in a vessel to beat smooth and mix in with it a few spoonfuls of cooked fine herbs (No. 385), and the fish marinade. Butter an oblong metal pie mold selected proportionately to the quantity of fish and forcemeat, lay it on a baking sheet covered with paper and line it with cold pie paste (No. 144). Mask the bottom and sides of this paste with a layer of the forcemeat and in the hollow center dress the fillets of salmon and truffles, alternated by layers of forcemeat; the mold should be full so that when cooked there remains little or no empty space (the top layer must be of the forcemeat). Wet the edges of the paste and cover over with a flat of the same, fastening it on the edges; then cut away the paste on a level with the mold and pinch it all around. Cover the top surface above the border with a fake cover--meaning a simple layer of puff paste (No. 146) cut the same shape as the top of the pie--and in the center of this make a small opening; egg over and decorate the top with designs made with the tip of a small knife, and cook for an hour and a half in a moderate oven, being careful to cover the paste with paper as soon as it becomes dry. A quarter of an hour after the pie has been removed from the oven pour into the hole on top a few spoonfuls of good jelly (No. 103) mixed with fish essence (No. 395) and reduced to a half-glaze, also a few spoonfuls of Madeira wine. Let it get cold for ten hours. At the last moment cut the pie into slices, and dress these, one overlapping the other on a long dish, and surround with chopped jelly and jelly croutons.

← No. 2565 Quail Pie Garnishings for Cold Dishes No. 2567 Snipe Pie →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a numbered reference system behind him, so this reads as a set of assembly instructions rather than a recipe. The hinge is the fill: the mold must be packed solid, because any air pocket becomes a cavity that the aspic cannot reach and the slices fall apart.

Moderate ovenThe recipe gives no temperature; a moderate oven is usually read as roughly 325-350F for the hour and a half. Tent the top with foil or parchment as soon as the pastry has taken colour, as instructed, or the crust will be dark well before the centre of the forcemeat is set.
Veal udder and panadaVeal udder was a common fat binder for fine forcemeat in the period and is effectively unobtainable; butter, which Ranhofer offers as the alternative, is the practical choice. Panada is a bread-and-milk or flour-based paste; the particulars are in No. 90, which is not given on this page.
Pike and gurnetBoth are lean, gelatinous white fish that bind well. Any firm lean white fish works in their place hough pike remains ideal if you can get it. Avoid oily fish for the forcemeat, which will muddy both colour and flavour.
Raw trufflesFresh black truffles sliced into fillets are the intent. Preserved truffle in a jar will do but contributes little; truffle oil is not a substitute, and its aroma does not survive a long bake.
Pie mold and pasteOblong hinged pie molds with removable sides are still made for raised pies. The cold pie paste of No. 144 is a sturdy casing built to hold shape, not a flaky short crust -- do not swap in ordinary pie dough or the sides will slump.
The fake coverThe puff-paste layer laid over the sealed top is purely decorative, a period convention that gave the pie a burnished lid without the puff pastry having to bear any structural load. The small central opening is the vent and later the aspic port.
Aspic and MadeiraThe jelly goes in fifteen minutes after the pie leaves the oven, while the interior is still hot enough that it flows into every gap. Pour in stages if it drains slowly; the pie is at its best when the jelly has filled the whole void.
The ten-hour restCool briefly at room temperature, then refrigerate for the remainder; a modern cook should not leave a fish-and-forcemeat pie standing out overnight.
YieldFour pounds of salmon plus the forcemeat makes a substantial pie; no yield is stated, and the mold is chosen "proportionately to the quantity of fish and forcemeat." It is served in slices, overlapped on a long dish with chopped jelly and jelly croutons around.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is the record of that kitchen, its recipes cross-referencing each other, so that a single pie calls on six other recipes by number. Cold raised pies of this kind belong squarely to the French garde-manger tradition, where a decorated pâté en croûte was a display piece for a buffet or a cold sideboard rather than a plated course. Its placement under "Garnishings for Cold Dishes," among quail and snipe pies, tells you what it was for: sliced, overlapped and ringed with chopped aspic, it was as much a piece of table architecture as it was food. The salmon and truffle combination, the Madeira maceration, and the sealing with a fish-essence jelly are all marks of the late nineteenth-century grand service, where a dish was expected to hold up under an hour of admiration before anyone ate it.