Mrs. Roundell's Practical cookery book

Russian Salmon Pie. — Either make or get from the bakers such dough as they use for making milk rolls. Take half a quartern of dough ; beat up two eggs with from a quarter to half a pound of butter, mix this well with the dough and let it rise. When sufficiently risen spread it out on a baking sheet. Take rice which has been well boiled the day before, and add to it a little butter, one hard-boiled egg chopped small, and a little boiled and minced onion. Spread the rice pretty thickly on your crust, leaving a sufficient margin uncovered all round. On this bed of rice lay a pound of Salmon. Cover the fish with another layer of rice, and turn over the margin of dough so as to completely enclose the whole. Make a little hole at the top. Bake the pie (it will probably need an hour), and before serving pour in a teacupful of good fish broth through the hole. Cod or haddock can be cooked in the same way. If cod is used, a few sauce oysters are a great improvement. RIVER FISH. River Fish, such as Salmon, Salmon Trout, and Trout are unrivalled in flavour, and other sorts, such as Grayling and Gudgeons are very good. But all these Fish should be cooked as soon as possible, for, as Izaak Walton says in his “ Compleat Angler,” published in 1653, “ These kinds of Fish, a Trout “ especially, if he is not eaten within four or five hours after he “ be taken, is worth nothing.” Sir Henry Thompson in Food and Feeding speaks of the astonishment with which a Frenchman tastes for the first time a Severn or Christchurch Salmon taken from the water in the H RIVER FISH morning, crimped on arrival in London in the afternoon, and served at dinner in the evening. He continues, “ The fine nutty “ flavour of the very delicate oil of the Fish, and the crisp “ brittle quality of the flakes which the flesh offers after “ crimping are wholly unknown wherever the Salmon has to be “ carried by a transit approaching in length to a duration of “ twenty-four hours.” The oil very soon acquires a certain flavour, which is in fact the first sign of the approach of decomposition. Salmon therefore ought to be eaten as fresh as possible. As soon as the Fish is quite dead the keeper should clean it at the water-side, leaving only the liver inside. It will be all the better if he can wipe the inside dry with a cloth. Before the Salmon stiffens it should be crimped. The keeper should do this by scoring the fish across the body with a sharp knife, working from head to tail, and making the cuts about two inches apart and nearly down to the bone. After this the Salmon should be held for a few minutes in running water, or under falling water, or plunged in a cool shady pool for a quarter of an hour. It should then be sent off at once to the cook. As the Salmon has been some time dead crimping cannot inflict pain, and there is no doubt that it makes the flesh of the Fish firmer and crisper. Much as Sir Henry Thompson objects to boiling Fish, he says, “ To cook crimped Salmon in perfection, a slice should be “ plunged into an ample saucepan of boiling salted water, and “ allowed to boil for eight minutes only.” I have already given an excellent recipe for Broiled Salmon.