Looking for Salmagundi recipes

[Free Plunder]

Salmagundi varies as the name implies. Interested in any special ways or formulae to make a potful. The crew is hungry and restless and we're low on rum. the cook

 

[Claude Mathis]

It is a stew of anything the cook had on hand, usually consisting of chopped meat, anchovies, eggs, and onions, often arranged in rows on lettuce and served with vinegar and oil, and spiced with anything available. The following is taken from a reprint of "Mrs. Hill's New Cook Book", originally published in 1867 and republished by Applewood Books of Bedford, Massachusetts.

"Boil two calf's feet; take the feet out when done; reduce the broth to a quart. The feet may be fried and used, first removing the bones. Let the broth become cold in an earthen vessel; scrape off all the grease; wipe the top of the jelly with a coarse towel; put the cake of jelly into a kettle lined with tin or porcelain; season it with two lemons cut up (removing the seed), fine blades of mace, a stick of cinnamon, pepper (white pepper is best), and salt to taste. Beat to a froth the whites of six eggs; stir these to the jelly just as it melts; it must then be left to clarify and not stirred again. When it simmers long enough to look clear at the sides, strain it through a flannel bag before the fire; do not squeeze the bag. Suspend it by running a stick through a loop made by tying the bag; rest each end of the stick upon a chair, and throw a table-cloth over all to keep out the dust. If the jelly does not run through clear the first time, pour it through the jelly-bag again. Set this aside. Prepare the meat and seasoning for the pie. Put into a stew-pan slices of pickled pork, using a piece of pork four inches square; if it is very salt[y] lay it an hour in tepid water. Cut up two young, tender chickens--a terrapin, if it is convenient--two or three young squirrels, half a dozen birds or squabs. Stew them gently, cutting up and adding a few sprigs of parsley. Roll into half a pound of butter two tablespoonfuls of flour; add this to the stew until the meat is nearly done. Line a fire-proof dish, or two fire-proof dishes (this quantity of stew will fill two common-sized or quart dishes with good pastry; mix the different kinds of meats; put in Irish potato dumplings; season to taste; pour in the gravy and bake. When done, remove the upper crust when the pie is cold and pack in the jelly, heaping the jelly in the middle. Return the crust and serve cold or hot. The jelly will prevent them become too dry. They are good Christmas pies and will keep several days. Very little gravy should be used, and that rich. Should there be too much, leave the stew-pan open until reduced sufficiently. This kind of pie keeps well if made in deep plates, and by some is preferred to those baked in deep moulds."

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Well there is some debate about this being a seafaring dish, and some point to Solomon Gundy in Jamaica as being a spiced, salted fish dish, as it is in Newfoundland. It seems to stem from the French salmogundis, but..,

To make SOLOMON GUNDY to eat in Lent 1764

Take five or six white herrings, lay them in water all night, boil them as soft as you would do for eating, and shift them in the boiling to take out the saltness; when they are boiled take the fish from the bone, and mind you don't break the bone in pieces, leaving on the head and tail; take the white part of the herrings, a quarter of a pound of anchovies, a large apple, a little onion shred fine, or shalot, and a little lemon-peel, shred them all together, and lie them over the bones on both sides, in the shape of a herring; then take off the peel of a lemon very very thin, and cut it in long bits, just as it will reach over the herrings; you must lie this peel over every herring pretty thick. Garnish your dish with a few pickled oysters, capers, and mushrooms, if you have any; so serve them up.

SOLOMAN GUNDY another Way. 1764

Take the white part of a turkey, or other fowl, if you have neither, take a little white veal and mince it pretty small; take a little hang beef or tongues, scrape them very fine, a few shred capers, and the yolks of four or five eggs shred small; take a delf dish and lie a delf plate in the dish with the wrong side up, so lie on your meat and other ingredients, all single in quarters, one to answer another; set in the middle a large lemon or mango, so lie round your dish anchovies in lumps, picked oysters or cockles, and a few pickled mushrooms, slices of lemon and capers; so serve it up.

This is proper for a side-dish either at noon or night.

SALMAGUNDY. 1823
This is a beautiful small dish, if in a nice shape, and the colours of the ingredients be properly varied. For this purpose chop separately the white part of cold chicken or veal, yolks of eggs boiled hard, the whites of eggs, beet root, parsley, half a dozen anchovies, red pickled cabbage, ham and grated tongue, or any thing well flavoured and of a good colour. Some people like a small proportion of onion, but it may be better omitted. A saucer, large teacup, or any other base, must be put into a small dish; then make rows round it wide at the bottom, and growing smaller towards the top, choosing such ingredients for each row as will most vary the colours. At the top, a little sprig of curled parsley may be stuck in; or without any thing on the dish, the salmagundy may be laid in rows, or put into the half-whites of eggs, which may be made to stand upright by cutting off a little bit at the round end. In the latter case, each half egg receives but one ingredient. Curled butter and parsley may be put as garnish between.

Most of the recipes for this as a seafaring dish fashion it as a sort of hodge-podge stew, of whatever the pirates or privateers could find as luxury ingredients. There is a show on The History Channel that mentions this, but doesn't site the reference and they often quote legend as historic fact...,the fact that cook books don't mention the dish at all until almost three decades after the Golden Age of Piracy leads one to conclude that they may be mistaking Lobscouse, (a very old seafaring stew made with some sort of meat (or fish) and anything else, and often thickened with ships biscuit)..., with the much younger salmagundi.

LD

 

[tenngun]

Varris alot I used to make it only to be told it wast salmagondy but brunswick stew.I love lobcosse or what ever. Have to try the fish version...thanks

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Here's another recipe for Salmaguni from 1760, and it's very different from the others, as it's more of a "hash" or a pâté garnished with pickles:

SALMAGUNDI
Take the Lean of some Veal that has been roasted or boiled, take none of the Skin, nor any Fat, mince this very small, (you must have about Half a Pound of it) then take a pickled Herring, and skin it, and mince the Flesh of it, or the Flesh of four Anchovies ; cut a large Onion, with two Apples, as small as the rest ; mix these together, laying them in litle Heaps, three on a Plate ; set some whole Anchovies curled, or upright, in the Middle, and garnish with Lemon and Pickles. This is to be served cold, with Oil, Vinegar, and Mustard

the very next recipe on the same page is:

A Cold Hash, or Salmaguni.
Mince the white of a cold Turkey, that has been roasted, with eight Anchovies, eight pickled Oysters, six pickled Cucumbers ; mince all small ; then lay it in a Dish handsomley ; lay round all Sorts of Pickles and Mushrooms, [garlic?] Cloves, Capers, and Samphire, and set by it Oil and Vinegar. This is proper to a cold Treat. So hash cold roast Veal, or the like.

LD

 

[williamsdav]

I first heard of this from a Boy Scout cookbook. The 'modern' recipe puts shredded rotisserie chicken and ham slices on top of a large bed of romaine lettuce. Sprinkled liberally with green beens (from a can), olives, sliced apples, mandarin orange pieces. It really is an attractive layout for a party, everyone making 'wraps' with the lettuce. Just not something I'm going to make at rendezvous.

 

[Blizzard of '93]

the cook and helpers should get first go at that pie.
work up an appetite preparing it. :haha:
sounds good though.

 

[George]

The 'modern' recipe puts shredded rotisserie chicken and ham slices on top of a large bed of romaine lettuce.

That recipe does its ancestor proud.

To Make Salamongundy
From The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, Hannah Glasse, 1747

Take two or three Roman or Cabbage Lettice, and when you have washed them clean, swing them pretty dry in a cloth: then beginning at the open End, cut them cross-ways, as fine as a big Thread, and lay the Lettices so cut, about an inch thick over the Bottom of a Dish. When you have thus garnished your Dish, take a Couple of cold roasted Pullets, or Chickens, and cut the Flesh off the Breasts and Wings into Slices, about three inches long, a Quarter of an inch broad and as thin as a shilling; lay them upon the Lettice round the End to the Middle of the Dish, and the other towards the Brim. Then having boned and cut six Anchovies, each into eight Pieces, lay them all between each Slice of the Fowls, then cut the lean meat off the Leggs into Dice, and cut a Lemon into small Dice; then mince the Yolk of four Eggs, three or four Anchovies, and a little Parsley, and make a round heap of these in your Dish, piling it up in the Form of a Sugar-loaf, and garnish it with Onions, as big as the Yolk of Eggs, boiled in a good deal of Water very tender and white. Put the largest of the Onions in the Middle on the Top of the Salamongundy, and lay the rest all round the Brim of the Dish, as thick as you can lay them; then beat some Sallat-Oil up with Vinegar, Salt and Pepper, and pour over it all. Garnish with Grapes just scalded, or French Beans blanched, or Station Flowers, and serve it up for a first Course.

Spence