Here’s another recipe from Marjorie Standish’s Cooking Down East. This recipe is exactly the way my 84 year old aunt makes it. If you don’t want to buy fresh salmon, using canned red salmon works just as well (as the recipe calls for). As for sides, I would recommend mashed potatoes (light, fluffy, REAL mashed potatoes) and peas. A good hearty meal for the first snowfall of Maine winter. I would serve this with a very basic white cream sauce rather than an egg sauce.

SALMON LOAF

1 large can red salmon
1/2  teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon pepper
3 tablespoons lemon juice
3 egg whites
1/4 cup melted butter or margarine
3 egg yolks
1 1/2 cups firmly packed soft bread crumbs
1 1/2 cups scalded milk

Remove skin and bones from salmon and mash very fine. Mix salmon, paprika, pepper, salt and lemon juice, melted butter, beaten egg yolks and bread crumbs. Add hot milk, fold in stiffly beaten egg whites. Pour into greased loaf pan. Bake at 375 degrees for 1 hour. Serve with egg sauce. Serves 8.

Image courtesy of jimbown0306, Flickr Creative Commons

I own several Marjorie Standish cookbooks. I fondly remember her columns in the Maine Sunday Telegram. For a Greek girl used to working with garlic, onions, and olive oil at every turn–Marjorie Standish was a refreshingly simple down home cook. She was a purist.

Marjorie Standish began writing for the Maine Sunday Telegram in 1948. She sold many, many cookbooks and was beloved. She was the Julia Child of Maine!

From the foreword to Cooking Down East.

“Some of these recipes I learned from my mother who got them from her mother. Others came from family members, neighbors, friends or acquaintances. Many were used by me in cooking schools when I worked for the Central Maine Power Company. Others were given to me by Maine housewives while I gave a range demonstration in their homes. Many have been sent from all over Maine by column friends. Or the telephone rings and someone has a recipe to share…

There is something special about a Maine recipe. It is remembering the smell of beans baking or seeing yeast rolls rising in their pans in a warm place…”

-Marjorie Standish, November 1968

Here’s one of my favorite Marjorie Standish recipes:

Maine Blueberry Pie (from Cooking Down East)

Pastry for a 2-crust pie.

4 cups blueberries
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons flour
Dash of salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 cinnamon
1 tablespoon butter

Line pie plate with pastry. Mix sugar and flour, spread about one fourth of it on lower crust. Fill with blueberries. Sprinkle remainder of sugar mix over them. Add salt, sprinkle with nutmeg and cinnamon. Dot with butter. Place top crust on pie, flute edges and cut slits. Bake at 425 degrees for 40 minutes.

Image by thebittenword.com