I can’t remember if I have ever bought a tin of salmon before. Tins of tuna yes, but buying salmon in a tin seems a bit strange, I don’t know why. But I fancied Jack’s salad which is in one of my favourite cook books “282 Ways of Making a Salad”. This was published in 1950 and many things we take for granted today were still not available to the post war British housewife. Rationing in Britain didn’t come to an end until 1954 but the authors (one of whom was actress Bebe Daniels) were looking to the future when everything would be available in abundance.
Jack’s salad strikes me as being very English for some reason. Salmon, hard boiled eggs, celery, pickles and mayonnaise. Quite simple but quite yummy – a not very good picture is here. I guess tinned salmon reminds me of going to my nan’s house when I was tiny. I seem to remember salmon sandwiches being thought of as quite a fancy treat – I’m sure it was tinned salmon. I remember it being very pink. In retrospect tinned salmon sandwiches seem very British.
It kind of makes me want to buy one of those little jars of fish paste when I next go to the supermarket.  I seem to remember that from shopping trips in the 1970s and I fancy I rather liked it…
I thought Jack was great in the Diana Dors film I watched recently, “Lady Godiva Rides Again”. He played a silly ass policeman, who turned out to be smarter than he seemed…
We had tinned salmon at my grandparents all the time–it always had lots of bones in it, I remember (and was always red salmon, not pink). Without the bones, I could have nostalgia for it–although those tins of paste didn’t do it for me, despite the classic packaging.
Then, on a more 70s notes, there were those tins of toast toppers from Heinz. Those are quintessentially English of a certain period.
I was watching Sabotage last night in my Hitchcock class and thought how English the meal was (in the best way)–not because Sylvia Sidney kills her husband with the meat knife, but because the vegetables and potatoes were put into a tureen, then served, a bit of elegance (and extra washing up) now lost.