Home › Fish › Salmon Sandwich No. 2
Salmon Sandwich No. 2
One can of salmon, two sticks of celery chopped fine, juice of half a lemon, a dash of salt, and a teaspoonful of melted butter. Mix and place between thin slices of lightly buttered white bread, cut in fancy shapes. Garnish with a sprig of parsley.
A tea-sandwich filling from the era when canned salmon was a pantry staple in every American kitchen. The proportions are sound; only the vessel sizes and a few habits need translating.
- The can of salmonCanned salmon in this period was commonly packed in a one-pound tall can, roughly twice the size of the 6-7.5 oz cans sold today, though smaller half-pound flats were also sold. Use two small cans, or a single 14-15 oz can if you can find one, and drain it well.
- Bones and skinOld-style canned salmon included the vertebrae and skin, which were meant to be mashed in. Modern skinless-boneless packs are fine here; if you use the traditional pack, crush the soft bones with a fork rather than picking them out.
- "Two sticks of celery"A stick means a rib from the head, not the whole bunch. Two ribs give about half a cup chopped, which is a generous crunch against a pound of fish.
- Butter as binderA single teaspoon of melted butter will not bind two cans of salmon into anything spreadable. The mixture is meant to be loose and slightly crumbly; if you want it to hold, add mayonnaise.
- Drain thoroughlyCanned salmon carries a lot of liquid, and lemon juice adds more. Press the fish in a sieve before mixing or the bread will be soaked through within the hour.
- Cut in fancy shapesUsually small cutters (rounds, diamonds, hearts) or a knife, applied after filling. Cut with a thin sharp knife or a cutter pressed straight down, not twisted, and trim crusts before filling rather than after.
- Holding and yieldEnough for roughly 16-20 small tea sandwiches. Cover with a barely damp cloth and refrigerate; assemble no more than two or three hours ahead, and keep chilled, as the filling is a cooked fish salad.
Canned salmon transformed the American sandwich. Commercial canneries on the Columbia River and in Alaska scaled up rapidly through the last decades of the nineteenth century, and by the time this book appeared the tall can of pink or red salmon was cheap, shelf-stable and available far inland, reaching households that had never seen fresh ocean fish. That accounts for the confident "one can of salmon" with no further description; the reader was assumed to know what came in it. The treatment here -- chopped celery, lemon, a little butter, white bread cut in shapes and a sprig of parsley -- belongs to the afternoon-tea and card-party tradition, where the point was daintiness rather than sustenance. The numbered title suggests the compiler set out several salmon fillings side by side.