Delia Smith’s salmon fishcakes mix tinned red salmon with creamy mashed potato, capers and cornichons, inside a crisp coating. The recipe makes 12, enough for 3 or 4 people, and they come with her warm cucumber and dill sauce. The mixture chills for about 2 hours first, but each batch fries in only 8 minutes.
This version is from The Delia Collection: Fish. The fishcakes themselves go back to her How to Cook Book One, so she has printed them twice.
The sauce is light. Diced cucumber is softened in butter, then mixed with crème fraîche and dill, and half of it is blended smooth.
In that earlier book the same fishcakes come with her English parsley sauce. That sauce is on the page for her salmon fillets baked in foil.
Delia Smith’s Salmon Fish Cakes
Course: DinnerCuisine: BritishDifficulty: Medium3-4
servings30
minutes51
minutes540
kcalTwelve small fish cakes of tinned red salmon and mashed potato, with capers, cornichons and egg. They are fried crisp and served with a warm cucumber sauce.
Ingredients
- For the fish cakes:
a 418g tin of red salmon
275g (10oz) Desirée or King Edward potatoes, peeled and quartered
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 heaped tablespoons chopped parsley
2 heaped tablespoons capers, rinsed, patted dry and chopped
6 cornichons, drained and chopped
2 large eggs, hard-boiled and chopped
1 dessertspoon anchovy paste, or 4 anchovies, mashed
2 tablespoons lemon juice
¼ teaspoon powdered mace
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
salt and freshly milled black pepper
- For the cucumber and dill sauce:
450g (1lb) cucumber
1 tablespoon chopped dill, plus a few sprigs to garnish
25g (1oz) butter
65ml (2½fl oz) crème fraîche
a little lemon juice
- For the coating and frying:
1 large egg, beaten
75g (3oz) matzo meal or soft white breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons groundnut or other flavourless oil
10g (½oz) butter
Directions
- Potatoes: Steam the potatoes with a dessertspoon of salt for 25 minutes, until they are absolutely tender.
- Dry: Drain them and put them back in the pan. Cover them with a clean tea cloth for about 5 minutes, to take up the steam.
- Mash: Mash the potatoes to a purée with the mayonnaise, using an electric hand whisk. Season them.
- Mix: In a large bowl, combine the mash, the salmon and all the other fish cake ingredients. Mix very thoroughly, then taste and season again.
- Chill: Cover the bowl and chill it for about 2 hours, until the mixture is firm.
- Cucumber: Peel the cucumber as thinly as you can with a potato peeler. Halve it lengthways, scrape out the seeds with a teaspoon and cut it into 5mm dice.
- Sweat: Melt the 25g of butter in a smallish pan over a very low heat. Add the cucumber and a little salt, cover, and let it sweat for about 10 minutes, shaking the pan now and then.
- Sauce: When the cucumber is just soft, stir in the crème fraîche, the chopped dill and a little lemon juice. Season and warm it gently, then blend half the sauce until smooth and stir it back in.
- Shape: On a lightly floured surface, pat the mixture into a long roll 5 to 6cm thick. Cut it into 12 rounds and pat each one into a neat, flat cake.
- Coat: Dip each cake in the beaten egg, then in the matzo meal or breadcrumbs, until it is evenly coated.
- Fry: Heat the oil and the 10g of butter in a large frying pan over a high heat until really hot. Add half the cakes, turn the heat down to medium and fry them for 4 minutes on each side.
- Second batch: Fry the rest in the same way. Drain all the cakes on crumpled greaseproof paper.
- Serve: Serve them on hot plates with the warm sauce and a sprig of dill.
Notes
- The potatoes must be completely soft. If they are not, Delia warns, the mash will have lumps.
- My own tip is to drain the tin of salmon well before it goes into the bowl.
FAQs
Why does Delia use tinned salmon for fishcakes?
Because she thinks it makes better fishcakes than fresh salmon. In 1998 she told readers not to cook any salmon just for this.
Ten years later, in How to Cheat at Cooking, she says it again. There she adds that tinned wild salmon is the best of all.
Why must the mixture chill for 2 hours?
So that it is firm enough to shape and coat. The Fish book gives about 2 hours, and her earlier printing says at least 2.
The mixture can wait longer than that, so you can make it in the morning for the evening, my own view.
What are Delia’s Salmon Rosti Fish Cakes?
They are another version, in her Summer Collection, for 4 as a main course or 8 as a starter. She makes them with a tail end of salmon, and she says any fish will work.
Delia writes that she always orders fish cakes in a restaurant, and keeps inventing new ones. She serves the rosti version with her Toasted Sweetcorn Salsa, and her crab cakes on the next page use the same grated potato.
What are her Salmon and Caper Fish Cakes?
They are her recipe for leftovers, in the Complete Cookery Course, for 2 or 3 people. They use up what is left of a whole salmon or a middle cut, though tinned red salmon works too.
The mix is salmon and creamed mashed potato, with parsley, capers, gherkins and hard-boiled egg. One is Fun has the same idea cut down for one person.
Which sauces does Delia serve with salmon fishcakes?
Three, across her books. The Fish collection has this cucumber and dill sauce, and the 1998 printing has the parsley sauce.
For her shortcut wild salmon fishcakes, she suggests watercress mayonnaise in summer. In winter she swaps it for hollandaise.
