{"id":88898,"date":"2015-08-17T16:09:40","date_gmt":"2015-08-17T20:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=88898"},"modified":"2015-08-17T16:11:57","modified_gmt":"2015-08-17T20:11:57","slug":"salmon-mousse-or-absolute-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/17\/salmon-mousse-or-absolute-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Salmon Mousse, or Absolute Power"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

First edition, 1988.<\/p><\/div>\n

Cooking, as we know, is a constant test of character. It\u2019s easy to pretend we\u2019re all attracted to the high-minded ideals of fostering community, continuing traditions, and feeding souls. But catering for others is often competitive\u2014even if the competition is only with oneself. There is the constant temptation to show off, to experiment, to give into exhibitionism, to put theoretical pleasures before a guest\u2019s actual comfort. The turning out of a completely anodyne meal can be an exhausting exercise, because for every normal and pleasing dish served, there exist the ghosts of a hundred more exciting possibilities considered and abandoned, haunting the dinner table with their potential glory. The trick is keeping overweening ambition at bay. The trick is remembering that, for the duration of the meal, you have a kind of control over others.<\/p>\n

And so the question really becomes: What does one do with absolute power? The Stanford Prison Experiment is always looming on the horizon. Benignity goes against nature. <\/p>\n

I have been wrestling mightily lately. The temptation: salmon mousse. Like many Barbara Pym fans, I have long owned The Barbara Pym Cookbook<\/a><\/em>, published in 1988 by the late author\u2019s sister, Hilary, and Honor Wyatt. And like many Barbara Pym fans, I have never dared cook from it. By the jacket copy\u2019s own admission, this is \u201can armchair cookbook,\u201d a collection of quotations from Pym\u2019s novels and corresponding recipes\u2014they make for excellent reading, but they don\u2019t excite one to run to the kitchen. While minute meal descriptions are one of the great pleasures of the Pym oeuvre, many of the novels take place during the tyranny of postwar rationing. However enthusiastic and sophisticated a cook she may have been\u2014and by all accounts she certainly was\u2014Barbara Pym\u2019s recipes are not necessarily calculated to appeal to the twenty-first-century palate. Or, at least to that of most of one\u2019s guests. An Anna Karenina\u2013<\/em>themed feast, people can get into. Some Tame Gazelle<\/em>? Maybe not so much.<\/p>\n

And yet:\u00a0Lately, the desire to make a salmon mousse has been so strong that I\u2019ve felt nearly powerless to resist. I have gone so far as to purchase the gelatin; I told myself it was for a hypothetical panna cotta<\/em>. In the late novel A Few Green Leaves<\/em>, the heroine, Emma Howick, prepares a tuna mousse for one of those unsatisfactory and withholding men who people the Pym universe. She goes to great trouble over the luncheon for the crummy guy, decorating the finished mousse with cucumber slices \u201cof exquisite thinness.\u201d<\/p>\n

The recipe in The Barbara Pym Cookbook<\/em>\u2014the first in the book\u2014allows for changing tastes: one might substitute fresh salmon for tinned, light cream for evaporated milk. Gelatin and mayonnaise are compulsory. Well, of course they are.<\/p>\n

One can easily see that, in a time when congealed shapes were less of a curiosity, this might have seemed an ideal summer luncheon dish: cool, easy, and pretty when released from its decorative mold, with its palette of pink and green. In such moments as this, it is important to apply a certain relativism; sneering at the tastes of another era has always struck me as the height of arrogant modern provincialism.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s not much place for theory when you\u2019re tasting and digesting, and the truth is, we live in a society. It would be an antisocial act to serve this salmon mousse to my guests, however much I might want to. And I don\u2019t want to eat it. At the end of the day, this feeling is stronger even than my desire to publicly disgrace myself.<\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review, and the Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cooking, as we know, is a constant test of character. It\u2019s easy to pretend we\u2019re all attracted to the high-minded ideals of fostering community, continuing traditions, and feeding souls. But catering for others is often competitive\u2014even if the competition is only with oneself. There is the constant temptation to show off, to experiment, to give […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[3528,64,1671,115,14363,19172,7657,19171,19173,19170,13829],"class_list":["post-88898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-barbara-pym","tag-cookbooks","tag-cooking","tag-food","tag-hosting","tag-provincialism","tag-recipes","tag-salmon-mousse","tag-tastes","tag-the-barbara-pym-cookbook","tag-trends"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAdventures with the Barbara Pym Cookbook<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sadie Stein on the temptations of salmon mousse.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/17\/salmon-mousse-or-absolute-power\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Salmon Mousse, or Absolute Power by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"August 17, 2015 \u2013 Cooking, as we know, is a constant test of character. 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