I was cooking in America, for a wealthy family, with my sister, Julia, as I recalled in my last post. We had a super important meal we were cooking for. The guests included George Bush Senior and the late Malcolm Forbes. Salmon had been requested.

My sister, by now, had cooked for the Frelinghuysens for several years. This was my first introduction to them. A moderately wealthy family by American standards, they did not make it anywhere near Forbes’s 400 despite the fact that Mr F’s father founded Chase Manhattan Bank!! But they counted Forbes as one of their family friends and he was the guest of honour.

We went down to the dock. We bought a giant salmon.We lugged it back to the house. We discovered that it was SO huge, it barely fitted into the Aga. It DID, but with only millimetres to spare.

Later that evening, we were just about to serve the main course (for some reason, Mrs F. had requested finger food hors d’oeuvres in the living room), when Mr F. came into the kitchen complaining that Forbes and George Bush Snr were the only 2 guests that made him laugh and they were deep in conversation. The rest of the guests his wife had invited were dull and he’d have far more fun with us, so what could he do to help?

My sister told him he could take the salmon out of the oven but to exercise caution because it was a tight squeeze. He did so, whilst filling us in on just whom we were cooking for. He wasn’t really paying attention to what he was doing, knocked the pan on the Aga on taking it out…. and accidentally severed its head.

He went into a tail spin. He was like Basil Fawlty on acid, except he was built like Manuel, the waiter. My sister, with great sang froid, handed him a large brandy and told him to go back to his guests. She told him that whatever happened next, as far as the salmon was concerned he should take in his stride and never give us away.

The minute he was out of the kitchen, she too went into meltdown because she had nothing to disguise the decapitation. All the tomatoes and cucumber were part of a complex salad. I said that she needed to carry on with everything else and I would go into the garden to see if I could find something to disguise the catastrophe.

I didn’t mention the fact that the living room had gigantic picture windows on 3 sides, giving panoramic views over the garden, did I? This meant that I had to scuttle from tree to tree and bush to bush, in order to avoid being seen by the guests. I felt a bit like Hiawatha evading her captors. I had gone out armed with a gigantic pair of kitchen shears, normally used for de-shelling crab and lobster. I guess I was out there for about 5 minutes, when I spotted a bank of Michaelmas Daisies. I swiped the lot.

I returned to the kitchen with arms full of flowers, to Julia’s complete astonishment. She asked me what on earth I thought I was doing? I replied, “We are going to dress the salmon with daisies, because they were all I could find!!” So we washed the flowers, getting rid of the pollen. We created a collar across the severed head, strewed flowers around the plate, and we called the guests to dinner.

When everyone was seated, Julia came in bearing a platter with the decorated salmon upon it. She arrived to applause, oohs and aahs, and a question. What was it?

With great aplomb, she replied, “It’s a family recipe. It’s called Floral Salmon!” It was a huge success. Indeed, it did look very beautiful.

Many years later, Julia met the Frelinghuysen’s new Chef, who said that she loved working for them. But she couldn’t understand why, every year, they always made her cook, on a particular day in August, a meal known as Floral Salmon.

My sister and I knew.