THE SALMON 



Christmas day or pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. And 

 the salmon has one special recommendation, not 

 only for the lessees of net fishings, but for the 

 epicures who regale on him. It is true that to be 

 eaten in perfection he should be freshly caught, 

 crimped and cooked. But for the many who must 

 miss that blissful moment, he rather improves with 

 a brief delay, unlike the sea fish, who can only have 

 full justice done them on the day and at the hour 

 when the boats come in. We do not pretend to 

 explain the matter philosophically, but Sir Humphry, 

 speaking as Halieus, concludes ' that the fat of 

 salmon between the flakes is mixed with much 

 albumen of gelatine, and extremely liable to decom- 

 pose/ that by keeping it cool decomposition is re- 

 tarded, and that by the application of boiling salt and 

 water at a high heat, the albumen again coagulates, 

 and the preserved curdiness comes out. 



We may be sure that the cooking in semi-barbaric 

 days was by the boiling or the broiling, and it is 

 impossible really to improve on those simple methods. 

 It is noteworthy that the earliest recipe we have 

 happened upon, which is in the ' Noble Book of 

 Cookery,' of the sixteenth century, goes as far towards 

 spoiling the noble fish as perverted ingenuity could 

 devise. The hot spicing and general bedevilling would 



