Home › Salads and Salad Dressings › Lobster Salad--No. 1
Lobster Salad--No. 1
Cut the meat from a fresh, well-boiled lobster into small dice, then set it on ice while you make a good mayonnaise dressing. When you have made the dressing set that on ice also. Have ready 1/3 as much celery as you have lobster, cut into half-inch lengths. Mix the lobster meat and the celery together, sprinkle with salt and cayenne, then stir in a cupful of the mayonnaise. Arrange 2 or 3 crisp lettuce leaves together in the form of a shell; cover a platter with these shells and put 2 or 3 teaspoonfuls of the salad in each. Garnish with the lobster's claws and hard-boiled eggs, cut into lengths, lengthwise.
A straightforward composed salad whose success rests almost entirely on temperature and on the quality of the mayonnaise. The original assumes you boil the lobster yourself and make the dressing by hand.
- Keep everything coldThe instruction to chill both lobster and dressing separately is the hinge of the recipe. Mayonnaise folded into warm shellfish loosens and weeps, and the salad turns greasy within minutes. Chill both to refrigerator temperature before combining.
- Lobster quantityNo weight is given. A 1 1/2 lb hard-shell lobster yields roughly 6 oz of picked meat, which with 2 oz celery gives enough dressed salad for a platterful of shells at the 2 or 3 teaspoonfuls the recipe specifies.
- Boiling the lobster"Well-boiled" is not defined here, and older instructions tend to run longer than modern taste prefers. A 1 1/2 lb lobster needs about 8-10 minutes in heavily salted boiling water, then an ice bath to stop the cooking and firm the meat.
- Raw egg in the mayonnaiseTraditional hand-made mayonnaise uses uncooked yolk. Use pasteurised eggs if serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised; otherwise good bottled mayonnaise, thinned with lemon juice, is a defensible substitute here.
- A cupful of dressingA cup is generous for 6 oz of meat. Add half, toss, and judge -- the lobster should be coated, not suspended. Reserve the rest to pass at the table.
- CeleryCut half-inch lengths from the inner ribs; the outer stalks are too stringy at that size. Crisp them in ice water and dry thoroughly, or the water will thin the dressing.
- The garnishThe recipe says only to garnish with the claws, and does not say whether they were meant to be eaten. Crack and pick the claw meat into the salad and use the cleaned shells, or skip them; hard-boiled egg quartered lengthwise carries the plate on its own.
- ServingTwo or three teaspoonfuls per lettuce shell makes this a first course or a component of a cold luncheon spread, not a main-dish salad. Assemble no more than half an hour before serving.