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Margot of Salmon
Place a pound-and-a-half fresh salmon in saucepan with water enough to cover, a good teaspoon salt, half teaspoon pepper and three tablespoons vinegar, let slowly come to a boil, then remove to table and let stand until required. Boil four good-sized, peeled potatoes in two quarts water with a teaspoon salt for thirty-five minutes. Drain on sieve, then press through potato masher into a vessel, add a half ounce butter, one and a half gills hot milk, half teaspoon salt, three saltspoons white pepper, saltspoon grated nutmeg, and mix well with a wooden spoon. Lift salmon from water, remove skin and bones, pull it in small pieces, add to mashed potatoes, mix well, then place in a baking dish dome-like, lightly egg surface, set in oven for fifteen minutes, remove and serve.
A fish-and-potato dome of the kind that turned a poached salmon into a second meal. The measures are turn-of-the-century, and the oven temperature is left entirely to the cook.
- The hinge: do not overcook the salmonBringing it slowly to a boil and then leaving it in the hot water off the heat is the whole method; the fish finishes in the cooling liquid. The recipe leaves it standing "until required," so judge it rather than the clock: it should flake at 145F and still look moist, since it gets a second heating in the oven.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills of hot milk is 3/4 cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon: three saltspoons of white pepper is 3/4 teaspoon, which is assertive but correct for this dish, and one saltspoon of nutmeg is 1/4 teaspoon.
- Half an ounce of butterOne tablespoon. It is a lean mash by modern standards; two or three tablespoons will not hurt it, and the mixture holds its dome shape better slightly stiff than slack.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; the recipe says only "set in oven," leaving the heat to the cook. Fifteen minutes suggests a fairly hot oven, and something in the region of 400-425F will set and colour the egg-washed surface without drying the interior.
- PotatoesThirty-five minutes suits large whole peeled potatoes; cut into chunks they will be done in 20. Use a floury variety (russet, Maris Piper) and drain them thoroughly on the sieve as directed, or the mash will be too wet to mould.
- "Lightly egg surface"Beaten whole egg brushed over the dome, as for pastry. Egg yolk thinned with a little milk browns faster and more evenly if your oven runs cool.
- The vinegarThree tablespoons in the poaching water helps firm the flesh and keep it pale. Little of it carries through to the finished dish, and omitting it changes the result only slightly.
- YieldServes four as a main course with a green vegetable or a salad. It reheats well, and cold leftovers can be shaped into cakes and fried.
This is one of the many fish hashes that filled the middle pages of grand hotel cookbooks: a poached fish, a plain mash, a hot oven, and a French name attached to distinguish it from the same thing done plainly. Names like Margot were applied loosely by professional kitchens of the period to garnishes and preparations, often after a person or simply as a house label, and the attribution rarely survives in any documented form. The dish itself belongs to the older economy of the professional larder, where a large salmon was poached whole for one service and its remains reappeared the next day bound with potato "the same logic that produced English fish pie, the Provencal brandade, and the American salmon croquette.