Salmon Mold
1 can salmon 3 eggs 2 tablespoonfuls Crisco 1 tablespoonful Worcestershire ½ cupful rolled crackers sauce Salt and pepper to taste
The text here is an ingredient list set in two columns that has run together in transcription, and no method survives on the page. Read the columns apart before you shop, then treat it as a standard steamed or baked fish loaf.
- Untangling the listThe real ingredients are: 1 can salmon, 3 eggs, 2 tablespoonfuls Crisco, 1 tablespoonful Worcestershire sauce, 1½ cupful rolled crackers, salt and pepper. "Sauce" belongs with the Worcestershire, not with the crackers.
- Rolled crackersMost likely soda crackers, crushed with a rolling pin to roughly the texture of coarse breadcrumbs. Reckon on something like 40 saltines for 1½ cups of crumbs, depending on how finely you crush them; panko is too airy and will not bind the loaf the same way.
- The can of salmonA period can was around 1 lb; today's standard is 14.75 oz, close enough. Drain it but keep the liquid — the mixture as listed has no added moisture at all, and a few tablespoons of the packing juice or milk keeps it from baking dry. Crush or remove the soft vertebrae and skin as you prefer.
- CriscoStill sold, and the point of the book. Melt the 2 tablespoons and stir it in warm so it disperses; cold shortening stays in lumps. Butter or a neutral oil can be substituted here.
- Method the page omitsFlake the salmon, mix everything, pack into a greased mold or loaf pan, and cook. Steaming in a covered mold set in simmering water for about an hour gives the smooth, sliceable texture the name implies; baking at 350F for 45–50 minutes gives a firmer, browner loaf. Either way take it to 160F in the center, since the eggs are the only thing holding it together.
- UnmoldingLet it stand 10 minutes before turning out, or it will crack. Run a knife around the edge first.
- Serving and yieldEnough for 4 or 5 as a main course. Period practice was to serve it with a white sauce, egg sauce or cucumber sauce; the loaf on its own is quite plain, and the Worcestershire is the only real seasoning in it.
The Story of Crisco (1913), with recipes by Marion Harris Neil, was published by Procter & Gamble to teach cooks what to do with a fat that had only reached the market in 1911 — a hydrogenated vegetable shortening offered as a substitute for lard and butter, and promoted as odorless, so that it would not carry the taste of fried fish into a cake. A salmon mold is exactly the kind of dish such a book wanted: canned Pacific salmon had become cheap and widely available by the 1900s, and molded loaves of flaked fish bound with egg and cracker crumbs were a familiar way of turning a can into a Sunday-supper centerpiece that could be sliced at the table. Crisco was also marketed to Jewish households as a pareve fat — one belonging to neither the meat nor the dairy category, and so usable with either — though the best-documented material of that kind, including the Yiddish-and-English Crisco Recipes for the Jewish Housewife, comes somewhat later than this book.