If you use canned salmon, drain it very dry and pick into coarse flakes with a silver fork. If the remnants of roast or boiled fish, remove all bits of bone, skin and fat, and pick to pieces in the same way.
1 bunch of celery, or 2 heads of lettuce.
For Dressing.
1 cup boiling water.
1 table-spoonful corn-starch.
2 table-spoonfuls best salad-oil.
1 teaspoonful made mustard.
½ cup vinegar.
1 small teaspoonful black pepper, or half as much cayenne.
1 teaspoonful salt.
1 table-spoonful melted butter.
2 raw eggs—yolks only—beaten light.
2 hard-boiled eggs, yolks only.
2 teaspoonfuls powdered sugar.
Wet the corn-starch with cold water and stir into the boiling water until it thickens well; add half of pepper, salt, sugar, and all the butter. Remove from the fire, and beat in the raw yolks while still scalding hot. Set aside to cool, while you cut the celery or lettuce into small pieces, tearing and bruising as little as may be. Mix this lightly with the fish in a deep bowl. Rub the boiled yolks to a powder, add the salt, sugar and pepper, then the oil, little by little, beating it in with a silver spoon; next, the mustard. When the thick egg sauce is quite cold, whip the other into it with an egg-beater, and when thoroughly incorporated, put in the vinegar. Mix half the dressing through the fish and celery, turn this into a salad-dish, mounding it in the centre, and pour the rest of the dressing over it.
Garnish with rings of boiled white-of-egg or whipped raw whites, heaped regularly on the surface, with a caper on top of each.
Do not be discouraged at the length of this receipt. It is easy and safe. Your taste may suggest some modification of the ingredients, but you will like it, in the main, well enough to try it more than once.
Devilled Salmon.
½ pound smoked salmon, cut into strips half an inch wide and an inch long.
4 table-spoonfuls good beef gravy, seasoned with onion.
1 table-spoonful tomato or walnut catsup.
1 table-spoonful vinegar.
2 table-spoonfuls melted butter or best salad-oil.
1 teaspoonful made mustard.
Cayenne to taste.
Boil the salmon ten minutes in clear water. Have ready in a saucepan the gravy and seasoning, hot and closely covered, but do not let it boil. Lay the salmon for ten minutes more in the melted butter, turning it several times. Then put into the hot gravy, cover and simmer five minutes. Pile the fish upon a hot platter; pour the sauce over it, and serve with split Boston crackers, toasted and buttered.
Smoked Salmon (Broiled).
½ pound smoked salmon, cut into narrow strips.
2 table-spoonfuls butter.
Juice of half a lemon.
Cayenne pepper.
Parboil the salmon ten minutes; lay in cold water for the same length of time; wipe dry, and broil over a clear fire. Butter while hot, season with cayenne and lemon-juice, pile in a “log-cabin” square upon a hot plate, and send up with dry toast.
Salt Cod an maître d’hôtel.
About a pound of cod which has been soaked over night, then boiled, picked into fine flakes.
1 cup milk.
2 table-spoonfuls butter.
Bunch of sweet herbs.
Juice of half a lemon.
1 table-spoonful corn-starch.
Pepper to taste.
Heat the milk to boiling, stir in the butter, then the corn-starch; stir until it thickens, when add the fish; pepper and cook slowly fifteen minutes. Turn out upon a dish, strew thickly with chopped green herbs—chiefly parsley; squeeze the lemon-juice over all and serve.
Mashed potato is an improvement to this dish.
Salt Cod with Egg Sauce.
1 pound salt cod, previously soaked, then boiled and allowed to cool, picked or chopped fine.
1 small cup milk or cream.
1 teaspoonful corn-starch or flour.
2 eggs beaten light.
2 table-spoonfuls of butter.
A little chopped parsley.
Half as much mashed potato as you have fish.
Pepper to taste.
Heat the milk, thicken with the corn starch; then the potato, rubbed very fine; next the butter, the eggs and parsley, lastly the fish. Stir and toss until smoking hot all through, when pour into a deep dish.
Or,
Make a sauce of all the ingredients except the fish and potato. Mix these well together, with a little melted butter. Heat in a saucepan, stirring all the while; heap in the centre of a dish, and pour the sauce over all.
Salt Cod with Cheese.
