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Salmon Sandwiches
(England.) Chop 1/2 pound of salmon, free from bones and skin, very fine. Add an equal amount of mayonnaise and two tablespoonfuls of chopped capers. Beat well and spread between thin slices of bread.
A three-ingredient tea sandwich filling that depends almost entirely on how wet you let it get. The proportions as written are generous with the mayonnaise; treat them as an upper limit.
- The mayonnaise ratioEqual weights of salmon and mayonnaise — 8 oz of each — gives a loose paste that will soak thin bread within minutes. Start with half that mayonnaise, about 1/2 cup, and add more only until the mixture just holds together on a knife.
- What salmon is meantAt the time this would ordinarily be tinned salmon, or the cold remains of a poached fish. Either works; drain tinned salmon thoroughly and press out the liquid, or the filling will be watery no matter how little mayonnaise you use. Use cooked salmon, not raw.
- Raw-egg mayonnaiseA period cook made mayonnaise from raw yolks and it went into an uncooked sandwich that might sit out for hours. Commercial mayonnaise is made with pasteurised egg and is the sensible choice here; if you make your own, use pasteurised eggs and keep the filling refrigerated.
- CapersTwo tablespoons of capers to half a pound of fish is assertive and deliberately so. Rinse brined capers and blot them dry; salt-packed capers need a longer soak, or the filling turns harsh.
- "Beat well"This means working the mixture to a smooth, spreadable paste rather than a chunky salad — a fork or the back of a spoon is enough. Over-beating tinned salmon reduces it to mush, so stop when it coheres.
- Bread and assemblyThin-cut white sandwich bread, buttered lightly on the cut faces, keeps the filling from soaking through. Trim the crusts and cut into fingers or triangles after filling, not before.
- YieldThe original gives no yield. Half a pound of salmon plus mayonnaise makes a substantial quantity of filling, enough for several rounds of bread cut into small tea-sandwich fingers. Make the filling ahead and refrigerate, but assemble within an hour of serving.
The book collects dishes gathered abroad and tags each with a country, which is why a sandwich filling arrives labelled simply "(England.)" — the point being that this was how the English were eating salmon at the turn of the century, not that the recipe is ancient. Two things made it possible: cheap tinned salmon, shipped in quantity from the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia from the 1870s onward, and the fixed ritual of afternoon tea, which needed small crustless sandwiches by the plateful. Capers, pickled flower buds of the Mediterranean caper bush, were often used in England as a foil for fish, most familiarly in the caper sauce served with boiled salmon and mutton; here they do the same job in miniature.