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Lobster Salad
In making lobster salad be careful that the lobster is sweet and fresh, and that the lettuces are crisp and dry. Unless the latter are perfectly free from moisture, the sauce, instead of blending properly, will be liable to float in oily particles on the top. Take the meat of one or two large lobsters, divide it into neat pieces, and season each piece slightly with pepper, salt, and vinegar. Place a bed of shredded lettuce-hearts at the bottom of a dish, put a layer of lobster upon it, mixed, if liked, with a few slices of cucumber; cover again with lettuce, and repeat until the materials are exhausted. Decorate the border with any garnish that may suit the taste. It may consist of aspic jelly cut in dice, sliced beetroot, stamped with a cutter, hard-boiled eggs cut into quarters, lettuce-hearts, nasturtium flowers, scraped radishes, etc. etc. Pour the sauce over at the last moment, and sprinkle a little powdered and sifted lobster coral on the top. Mayonnaise sauce is the most suitable for all fish salads. It is made as follows. Beat the yolk of one raw egg until thick. Add a salt-spoonful of salt, a salt-spoonful of pepper, a salt-spoonful of mustard, half a pint of oil, and a quarter of a pint of vinegar. After the salt, pepper, and mustard, the oil should be added, in drops at first, and afterwards in tea-spoonfuls, and the sauce should be beaten a minute between each addition. After every six tea-spoonfuls of oil put in a tea-spoonful of vinegar. When finished, the sauce should have the appearance of thick cream. Taste it before serving, to ascertain if the seasoning be agreeable. If the mayonnaise is made before it is to be used, it should be kept in a cool place. Time, an hour to prepare the salad. Probable cost, from 3s. to 5s. Sufficient for a dozen persons.
A Victorian supper-table set piece, and the method still works — but the mayonnaise proportions and the sheer weight of vinegar need reading with a modern eye.
- The hinge: dry leavesThe opening warning is the whole recipe. Water clinging to lettuce thins and breaks an oil emulsion, and the dressing separates into slicks rather than coating the leaves. Spin or towel the lettuce until genuinely dry, and salt and drain cucumber slices before they go in.
- Salt-spoonfulA salt-spoon holds roughly a quarter teaspoon. So a quarter teaspoon each of salt, pepper and mustard powder — modest seasoning for the volume of sauce that follows.
- Imperial measuresA pint here is 20 fl oz, so half a pint of oil is 10 fl oz (about 1¼ US cups) and a quarter pint of vinegar is 5 fl oz.
- One yolk will not carry that oilOne yolk will not carry that oil easily -- Ten fluid ounces of oil on a single yolk is at the upper end of what one yolk will hold, and the emulsion is correspondingly easy to break. Adding a second yolk, or scaling the oil down, makes it more forgiving.
- The vinegarA quarter pint of vinegar to half a pint of oil would give a sauce far sharper than modern mayonnaise, which typically carries a tablespoon or two of acid in total. Note, though, that the recipe's own instruction -- a teaspoonful of vinegar to every six of oil -- delivers only about ten teaspoons, under 2 fl oz, for the stated oil. Add it by the teaspoon as directed and stop when the flavour suits you; the instruction to taste before serving is there for a reason.
- Raw yolksThe mayonnaise is never cooked. Use pasteurized eggs if serving anyone elderly, pregnant, very young or immune-compromised, keep the sauce refrigerated, and dress the salad at the last moment as the recipe says.
- Lobster coralThe dark green roe of a hen lobster, which turns coral red when cooked. Dry it in a low oven, then crush and sieve it. A shop-bought cooked lobster may arrive without it, in which case paprika is a usual stand-in for colour.
- Aspic diceThe diced jelly of the garnish would typically have been made from a clarified fish or veal stock set with gelatine. A firm, well-seasoned stock set with leaf gelatine and chilled in a shallow tray cuts cleanly into cubes.
- YieldTwelve portions from one or two large lobsters means small, garnished helpings within a long supper of many dishes. As a main-course salad, two lobsters serve four to six.
Lobster salad was one of the fixed points of the Victorian cold supper — ball suppers, wedding breakfasts, race-day luncheons — where dishes stood dressed and garnished on a sideboard and guests helped themselves. That context explains the elaborate border of aspic dice, stamped beetroot, quartered eggs and nasturtium flowers: the dish was built to be looked at across a room before it was eaten. The mayonnaise instructions are the real lesson, an emulsion technique whose origins are disputed but which was by this date thoroughly naturalised in English kitchens. The stated cost of three to five shillings marks it as a genuinely expensive dish for a household of the period, which is part of why it carried the prestige it did.