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Shrimp Salad
One can of shrimp well washed in cold water, one bunch of small celery, a small onion, and one-half green pepper. Cut all in small pieces before using, and add the shrimp also cut in small pieces. Make a boiled dressing of one cup of vinegar, a lump of butter size of walnut; let boil and add a large tablespoon of sugar, one tablespoon of flour, one teaspoon of mustard, a pinch of cayenne, one-half teaspoon of salt, one cup of milk, and two eggs. Let all boil together until smooth.
— Mrs. Nicholas Lauria
A straightforward canned-shrimp salad with an old-style cooked dressing. The salad needs no explanation; the dressing is where the attention goes.
- The hinge: temper the eggsWhisk the flour, sugar, mustard, salt and cayenne into the milk, then beat the eggs into that mixture cold before it meets the hot vinegar. Add the hot vinegar in a thin stream, whisking, and return to low heat only until it thickens to coating consistency. "Let all boil together" is period shorthand; held at a hard boil it will curdle into scrambled egg in vinegar.
- Butter the size of a walnutAbout one tablespoon. Shelled walnut, not the whole nut in its shell.
- The vinegar is strong by modern tasteHome and small-producer cider vinegar varied in strength, and the sugar was clearly expected to carry it. With today's 5% vinegar, a full cup against a cup of milk gives a very sharp dressing. Taste at the thickening stage and slacken with a little more milk if wanted.
- Canned shrimpModern cans run about 4 to 6 oz drained; period pack sizes varied. It arrives in a salty, faintly metallic brine, which is likely why the recipe insists on the cold-water wash; drain well and pat dry or the dressing will thin. Cooked frozen shrimp, thawed and cut up, substitutes directly.
- A bunch of small celeryProbably a whole small head of the slenderer celery then common, rather than a modern Pascal head. A few inner ribs with their leaves will do.
- Cool before dressingCooked dressings are meant to be made ahead and chilled; they thicken further as they cool. Poured on warm, it wilts the celery and pepper. Dress within an hour or two of serving so the vegetables keep their snap.
- YieldThe dressing makes something over two cups, more than this salad needs. Use what it takes and refrigerate the rest for up to a week; it is good on potato or cabbage salad.
- ServingEnough for 4 as a first course or luncheon dish, spooned into lettuce cups or on buttered bread.
Boiled dressing was a workhorse salad sauce of American home cooking from roughly the 1870s through the 1930s: flour and egg thickened, sharpened with vinegar and mustard, cheaper and more stable than a mayonnaise beaten by hand with expensive olive oil. Community cookbooks of the period commonly carry one or more versions, and it survives today mostly in the sweet-sour dressings still put on coleslaw and hot potato salad in Pennsylvania and the Midwest. Canned shrimp made a shellfish salad possible well inland: Gulf packers were canning shrimp from the later nineteenth century and the tins travelled by rail to inland groceries. Signed contributions like Mrs. Lauria's are characteristic of cookbooks compiled from neighbours' receipts, where the name attached served as part of the recommendation.