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Salmon Sandwich No. 4
Flake the salmon and moisten with mayonnaise dressing. Use as a filling between thin slices of brown bread lightly buttered. Garnish with a slice of lemon that has been dipped in finely chopped parsley.
A four-line filling that assumes you already have poached salmon and homemade mayonnaise on the sideboard. The only real decisions are the fish and the bread.
- QuantitiesNone are given. A 6-oz can or roughly a cup of flaked cooked salmon with 3 to 4 tablespoons of mayonnaise fills four to six sandwiches cut in halves or fingers.
- The salmonAt the time this would have meant either canned salmon or the remains of a poached whole fish. Canned works well here — drain it thoroughly and press out the liquid, or the mayonnaise will slacken and soak the bread. Pick out skin and the soft round vertebrae if you object to them, though they were often mashed in.
- "Mayonnaise dressing"Mayonnaise of this period was a raw-yolk emulsion. Commercial jarred mayonnaise is made with pasteurised egg and is the practical substitute; if you make your own, use pasteurised eggs and keep the sandwiches cold.
- Brown breadProbably not the steamed Boston brown bread of the same period; here it most likely means a plain wholemeal or graham loaf, sliced thin. Butter both faces right to the crust — that is what keeps the moisture out of the crumb.
- Flake, do not mashBreak the fish along its natural leaves with a fork and fold the dressing through. Overworking it gives a paste that reads as tinned rather than as salmon.
- SeasoningThe original leaves it out entirely. Salt, pepper and a squeeze of lemon into the filling are worth adding, since the lemon garnish contributes nothing but appearance.
- The parsley-dipped lemonCut a thin round, make a small radial slit, and press the wet cut edge into very finely chopped dry parsley so it clings. This is plate decoration for a tea table, not part of the sandwich.
- Holding and servingAssemble no more than an hour or two ahead, cover with a damp cloth or film, and refrigerate. Mayonnaise-dressed fish should not sit out at room temperature through a long afternoon.
Sandwich books proliferated in America between about 1900 and 1920, when afternoon tea, card parties and packed lunches all created demand for small, tidy, cold food, and canned salmon gave cooks a year-round fish that needed no cleaning or cooking. That combination is why a single volume can run to four numbered salmon sandwiches — the variations are in the moistener and the bread rather than the fish. Salmon was being served with brown bread and lemon before the tin, and the parsley-fringed lemon slice belongs to the same late-Victorian garnishing habit that produced radish roses and piped butter. Mayonnaise was still commonly made at home in this period; bottled versions reached American delicatessens and groceries in the 1910s and 1920s and made this kind of filling a matter of minutes.