In today's episode of 18th century cooking we are going to be digging into this very popular method
of food preservation in the 18th century and that is called potting. It's uh something that was done
in kitchens in the 18th century all the time the cookbooks are filled with recipes for potting
different sorts of things generally meats fish and sometimes even vegetables and even though it
was done all the time in the 18th century today we don't use this same method of food preservation.
It's been replaced by canning either canning in an everyday kitchen or
sort of industrial canning. So what we're going to end up with today is something very similar to
this salmon that has been canned. Now many of these recipes are specifically for like say
salmon or lobster or different sorts of meats this particular recipe out of Mrs Frazier's cookbook
is just for potting any sort of fish. It says "scrape and clean them well cut them into middling
pieces season with salt and spices pack them close up in a potting can with plenty of butter above
and below tie some folds of coarse paper on the pot then put them into a slow oven" so not too hot
"and when they are enough fired" or cooked in this case "take them out of the can drain them
well from their liquor let both cool put the fish into small white pots skim all the butter off of
the liquor then take some more butter along with that you take from the liquor melt it down pour it
on the fish" and then it ends with this is kind of curious "send in the pots to the table". Now this
kind of referenced the idea that this finished thing would basically go right to the table.
Generally though this is a food preservation method and you'll see some of these recipes say
when you do this this might last up to a year in its little cooking vessel. Let's get right
into the recipe here. We've got a couple pieces of salmon fillets we're going to cut this down
to the size that's going to fit into our potting dish because of course we're going to cook these
once and then they're actually going to go back into our potting dish. So we know kind
of the size they need to be we're going to salt and pepper these first cut them in half so that
they will fit in this particular pot well. We're going to butter the inside of it well
and then put in a small layer of butter in the bottom lay our pieces of salmon on top.
A little bit more butter up on top of those and then this is going to go in the oven. Most
of these recipes actually call for covering this dish in the oven or you know how it's being baked
with paper we're going to take brown paper cover our dish tie that over the top and that's going
to seal in the flavors and the moisture we don't want this to dry out we don't want to
lose those wonderful flavors. In it goes to the oven and again she called for a slow oven so
we're going gonna bake this at 325 degrees. We're gonna bake this in a dutch oven.
So our potted salmon is in the oven baking right now and I thought I would talk a little
bit more about potting. So again they potted all sorts of meats and vegetables and we have done
potted beef before, wonderful episode, they would pot brawn they would pot venison and
even something like poultry. Imagine small birds they would pot whole so you would have
like a whole woodcock or something sealed up in your little potting dish. They also
potted vegetables and things like mushrooms not only that but they potted butter itself I'm not
sure exactly how you pot butter maybe you put it pack it in there and then you pour clarified
butter on top and you hope it doesn't melt it I don't know exactly how potted butter worked
but they certainly potted butter. Now where did this come from? Now generally it's thought that
they used crusts like big pie crusts to do a meat preservation method and we've covered that also in
the past they would take the top off of these pies after they bake them pour clarified butter in them
and set that top back on and save that back for later might last up to a month. I think there was
then a evolution where the crust disappears and is just replaced by this potting dish so it kind
of saved a bunch of effort and shortcut the whole system. So you generally see this potting method
showing up in the very early 17th century and by the 18th century it is a very popular method.
In the 18th century one of the most common things that you would find that you would be able to buy
in the store is potted char which is a special kind of fresh water fish that was available
in England at the time and I've got this wonderful reference it is from
1738 so it's fairly early reference. And this is the Duke of Montague and he is writing a Mr.
Atkinson he says "I received yours of the first of this month" your package "and also the pot of char
which you sent by that day's courier which was the best I ever et and I would have you send me
some of the same sort by every carrier take care to pick the hen fish and those that are of the
red kind and let them be potted and seasoned just as that pot was for it can't be better".
That's what the Duke of Montague thought about potted char in the 18th century.
Let's take our salmon out of the oven. Our salmon has been in this dutch oven for 35 minutes we need
to take this out of the dutch oven we want to be very careful though because we have liquid
butter right at the top so it's got to stay level. Now we're going to take the salmon out carefully
we've let this cool so I can get in there with my fingers because it might want to break up we
want to keep these into fairly large pieces we're going to take this out of our dish set it aside
on a plate to cool. We're going to recover this butter i'm not going to just throw this out we're
going to leave the drippings down in the bottom that's the part we want to leave behind because
that's the preservation part this is the part that will go bad so we're going to leave all those
solids down in the bottom of that and pour off our liquid butter or clarified butter in this case and
pour that into our pipkin of butter that we are clarifying so that we can top this up we're going
to seal the top with butter. And real quick let's talk about clarifying butter here. To have this
be preserved for this butter to stay good at room temperature we need to remove all the milk solids
and all the water from our butter so clarifying it we melt that butter and all these milk solids
will fall to the bottom that's the part that goes bad on butter that part that goes rancid
if any sort of froth floats to the top we don't want that either what we want is that nice golden
oil that's the good part that's what's going to stay good at room temperature for a long time.
Our salmon has sat overnight the clarified butter totally solidified it's pretty cool
here in the kitchen so nice and hard I peeled off a section of it so we can get to the meat
that's down underneath so we can try it out so let's find out just how this salmon turned out.
So moist and creamy set up in this way still have that wonderful salmon flavor you know there's a
that little bit of salt and pepper and we could have spiced it a little bit more the recipes call
for different kinds of spicing here and this spice is part of the preservation that's going on with
this but we still have just amazing flavor and the texture is perfect when it's sort of sealed
up in this manner just so so good and I mean all that butter there doesn't hurt it at all.
This is a really interesting dish because of its texture in the different kind of ways you can use
it this is so creamy as I was saying earlier that you could easily spread it on a piece of
bread or on crackers or something like that which they would have done in the 18th century this is
this is something that was eaten cool or cold it's like a snack or a special part of the meal where
you're looking for something different you've had um you know you've already had the main dish and
you want this little finish uh dish that you can just kind of peck on or something that you would
just kind of get dip into at a different part of the day so you might eat on this all day long just
sort of snack on it really really interesting dish. One of the things that shows up in many
of these potted dishes is is the texture whether if it's a meat that does has a much uh tougher
texture like potted beef then that's ground till the till it's um very very soft like a pate
the fish here has a natural tendency to get soft like that so we didn't have to to pound it up
and then there are some other dishes like potted lamprey that are almost gelatinous when they
when they're done so everything is supposed to be this sort of almost spreadable form.
This is a perfect example of something that you would read in a cookbook and you can't really
understand it you don't really know what's going on with it it doesn't really explain itself until
you actually get a chance to do it that's what's fun here with this 18th century cooking is we get
to experience it cook those things up and then taste them such such an interesting experiment.