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Lobster Salad--No. 3
Pick the meat from the body of a good-sized lobster, take the meat out of the tail part in one piece, and cut it, with the contents of the claws, into thin slices. Chop the whites of 2 hard-boiled eggs, and rub the yolks through a hair sieve. Do the same with the coral of the lobster, mixing the soft part and any bits with mayonnaise sauce. Pour the sauce into the salad dish, put in a layer of shred lettuce, and put on top the slices of lobster, interspersed with hard-boiled eggs quartered, sliced beet-root, and cucumber. Repeat the arrangement until the bowl is full, sprinkling the egg and coral over and between the layers. Reserve some of the hard-boiled egg, both yolks and whites, and arrange alternated with the slices of beet and white lobster meat, around the edge of the dish, and just before serving pour over the top some of the mayonnaise. Crab salad may be made in the same way.
A layered composed salad rather than a tossed one, built in a bowl and finished with mayonnaise at the table. The lobster does the work, so buy it cooked the same day or cook it yourself and chill it thoroughly before slicing.
- Lobster quantityA "good-sized" lobster here means a 1 1/2 to 2 lb whole cooked animal, which yields roughly 1/3 to 1/2 lb of picked meat. That fills a small to medium salad bowl and serves two or three as a first course.
- CoralThe coral is the roe, carried by female lobsters, and it turns from dark green-black to bright red when cooked. If your lobster has none, skip it and use the sieved egg yolk alone for the sprinkled garnish. "The soft part" most likely means the tomalley, the soft green liver.
- Hair sieveA fine-mesh sieve or a drum sieve. Pushing the yolks and coral through gives a fine crumb that scatters evenly; the back of a spoon against any fine strainer does the same job.
- Beet-rootBoiled or roasted beets, cooled and peeled; the recipe does not say whether plain or pickled, and both were used in salads of the period. Slice them thin and blot them dry, or they will bleed pink into the mayonnaise and the white lobster meat.
- Cutting the tailRemoving the tail meat in one piece and slicing it crosswise gives neat medallions with the red edge showing. Strip out the dark intestinal vein running the length of the tail before slicing.
- MayonnaiseThe sauce is used two ways: a pool in the bottom of the dish and a spoonful over the top just before serving. Do not dress the layers in between, or the lettuce collapses. If you are making mayonnaise from scratch and serving it uncooked to anyone elderly, pregnant or immune-compromised, use pasteurized eggs.
- Assembly and timingBuild the salad no more than an hour ahead and keep it refrigerated; the lettuce wilts and the beet stains once it stands. Add the top spoonful of mayonnaise and the ring of egg, beet and lobster at the last moment.
- Crab versionFor the crab variation use about the same weight of picked meat, keeping lump meat in pieces for the top layers and using the shredded body meat lower down. Female crabs do carry coral, but it is less often to hand, so sieved yolk will serve for colour.