186. - To Pickle Salmon. - The Newcastle Method

Put any quantity of salmon into an earthen jar; cover it with equal parts of good vinegar and water; add cayenne pepper and salt in proportion to the fish, and bake if in a moderate oven. This pickle will keep a long time, with the addition of a little fresh vinegar; and if mace or Gloves be added, with a few bay-leaves laid in the mouth of the jar, it will be found an improvement. Trout may be preserved the same way. Fish thus pickled, must not be washed previously, but rubbed with a dry cloth.

Though generally eaten cold, yet in Newcastle it is not unfrequently warmed up in its pickle-liquor.

187. - Salmon-To Pickle Undressed

Scale the fish, rub well with a cloth, and scrape away all the blood about the backbone, but do not wash it; cut off the head, and divide the fish into pieces about six inches long; then boil the pieces in a pickle made of equal parts of vinegar and water, with a few cloves and two or three blades of mace until done. Skim carefully all the time the fish is boiling, and when done remove the fish and pour the liquor into a jar or tub, so that both may become cold; when cold, put the fish into the liquor, with one-third more vinegar, and some whole pepper.

188. - Salmon Potted

Cut a handsome piece from the middle of the salmon; remove the scales, and wipe it with a clean cloth. Rub into it some common salt thoroughly.

Beat up some mace, cloves, and whole pepper; season the salmon with it; place it in a pan with a few bay leaves; cover it with butter, and bake it until thoroughly done; remove it from the gravy, letting it drain thoroughly, then place it in the pots. Clarify sufficient butter to cover all the pots after the salmon has been put into them; put it to cool.

189. - To Pickle Salmon

Scale, clean, split, and divide into handsome pieces the salmon; place them in the bottom of a stewpan, with just sufficient water to cover them.

Put into three quarts of water one pint of vinegar, a dozen bay leaves, half that quantity of mace, a handful of salt, and a fourth part of an ounce of black pepper.

When the salmon is sufficiently boiled remove it, drain it, place it upon a cloth. Put in the kettle another layer of salmon; pour over it the liquor which you have prepared, and keep it until the salmon is done. Then remove the fish, place it in a deep dish or pan, cover it with the pickle, which, if not sufficiently acid, may receive more vinegar and salt, and be boiled forty minutes. Let the air be kept from the fish, and, if kept for any length of time it will be found necessary to occasionally drain the liquor from the fish; skim, and boil it.

190. - Collared Salmon

Cut off the head and shoulders, and the thinnest part of the tail, thus leaving the primest part of the salmon to be collared. Split it, and having washed and wiped it well, make a compound of cayenne pepper, white pepper, a little salt, and some pounded mace. Rub the fish well with this mixture inside and out; roll and bandage with broad tape; lay it in a saucepan; cover it with water and vinegar, one part of the latter to two of the former; add a table-spoonful of pepper, black and white whole, two bay leaves, and some salt. Keep the lid closed down. Simmer until enough, strain off the liquor; let it cool; pour over the fish when cold, garnish with fennel.