Cassell's dictionary of cookery

Salmis Sauce (another way).— Scrape the red part of a carrot, and put the pulp into a saucepan with a bay-leaf, a bunch of parsley, a sprig of thyme, three or four pieces of bacon or blanched bacon-rind, three shallots chopped fine, and the bruised trimmings of the game to be used for the salmis. Add a slice of fresh butter, or a table-spoonful of lucca oil, and stir the ingre- dients over the fire till they are lightly browned. Moisten them gradually with half a i:)int of good brown sauce and a glassful of sherry and madeira. Stew all gently together till the sauce is very good, skim and strain it, season with pepper and salt, and it will be ready for the game. Time, one horn- or more. Sufficient for five or six persons. Salm.On.— The salmon, according to Izaak Walton, is the king of fresh -water fish. It is called a river fish, because it is gene- rally caught in rivers, and the river is its birth-place ; but the sea is its home and its pasture-ground, and to this it must return periodically to renew its strength or die. In fact, it inhabits fresh and salt water alternately, spending its winter in the sea and its summer in the river. Moreover, as the swallow returns to the roof or shed that gave it shelter, so does the salmon to the gravelly river's bed where it first saw the light. This fact has been rejjeatedly proved, and involves important consequences. SAL ( 799 ) SAL If all the salmon in a river are aiught, the river will be from that time salmonlcss, unless it can he re-stocked with young salmon, who, after being reared in it, will at the proper age find their way to the sea and return to the river again. Certainly no stranger salmon cruising along the coast will mistake that river's mouth for its own river's mouth. This fact has been ah-eady successfully taken advantage of, and salmon have been naturalised in rivers where formerly there were no signs of them. Salmon are never found in warm latitudes. They are distributed over the North of Europe and Asia, and are abundant, and even com- paratively cheap, in some parts of North America. The price is kept up, however, by the facility with which the fish is packed in ice, and sent to a distance by rail. The penny-a- pound times, when apprentices and servants refused to eat salmon more than three times a week, are gone for ever. The llesh of the salmon is rich and delicious in flavour. To be eaten in perfection it should be dressed before it has lost a tide. When this is done there will be found between the flakes a white creamy substance which is very highly esteemed. Nevertheless, the fish when in this condition is very indigestible, and it is much more wholesome when it has been kept a day or two. Then the curd undergoes a change, and melts do\vn, and though less delicate in flavour, the fish becomes richer and much more whole- some. The flesh of the male fish has the best flavour, and has more curd than the female. Salmon is in season from the beginning of February to the end of August. It is cheapest in July and August. No other fish can be cooked in so many different ways. It requires to be well done ; when imderdressed it is wholly uneatable.