The housekeeper's guide to preserved meats, fruits, vegetables, &c

Salmon preserved in tins is one of the most useful of all the various preserved fish now sold. In the first place it makes an admirable luncheon or breakfast dish served just as it is, only requiring the addition of a little vinegar, oil, pepper, and salt to dress it. Tinned salmon can be served hot, but its best form when heated is in the shape of salmon cutlets. In order to make salmon cutlets, take a tin of salmon, and pound the fish, or some of it, in a mortar, with a piece of onion (about the size of the top of the thumb), chopped very fine. Add to it a teaspoonful of chopped green parsley, and, if it is possible to obtain it, a little lobster butter will make the salmon look better in colour. Add also a small quantity of butter, some black pepper, and a dessert-spoonful of anchovy sauce. When the whole has been pounded together till it is a smooth paste, of the consistency of putty, mould the paste into little cutlets about the size of an oval picnic biscuit. These little cutlets must be first floured, and then dipped in some well beaten-up egg, and covered with some very fine breadcrumbs. They should now be put by to dry for about an hour, or rather more. A few minutes before they are wanted to be served they should be plunged for a few seconds into smoking hot fat ; the temperature of the fat should be quite 350 degrees. Half a minute is amply sufficient to cook them and to fry them a nice bright golden-brown colour outside. These cutlets should now be served on a dish, with a little double parsley fried. They can be served either at breakfast, luncheon, or dinner. When served as a breakfast dish, instead of ornamenting the cutlets with fried parsley, a very nice way of sending them to table is with some pickle sauce. Take a brimming tablespoonful of Captain White’s Oriental Pickle, or a tablespoonful of imperial pickles or piccalilli can be used. These pickles should be cut up rather fine, and made hot, with about a tablespoonful of some good brown gravy. This should be poured in the middle of the dish of cutlets, but it should not be poured over the cutlets themselves. Tinned salmon is also very useful for making sandwiches. There has of late years been a tendency to serve what are known as sandwich suppers, and from a tin of salmon, when salmon is out of season, ar large number of very excellent sandwiches can be made. Take a tin of salmon, bearing in mind that the red portions are best for this purpose ; pound it in a mortar with a little butter, the mortar having been previously rubbed with slices of onion. Sufficient butter should be added, so that, when pounded, it is of a consistency to be spread like butter with a knife. Also add, to a whole tin of salmon, very nearly two teaspoonfuls of very finely chopped parsley. A little tarragon vinegar can also be added, but with very great caution, for cooks should remember that the flavour of tarragon is very strong, and likely to overpower every other flavour. A dessert-spoonful of anchovy sauce can also be added to this, and the whole mixed very thoroughly together. Now, if the occasion is one of considerable importance, housekeepers would do well to serve the sandwiches between two thin pieces of fried bread, which is far superior to ordinary cut bread.