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Tarragon and Chervil
Decorate a border mould with tarragon and chervil leaves and some nice pieces of lobster.
Melt the gelatine in the tomato juice, whip the cream and the aspic jelly, mix these together, stir in the mayonnaise and the melted gelatine, also some small pieces of lobster, fill the mould carefully and set. When cold, turn out and fill the centre with small salad.
A cold moulded lobster cream in the Edwardian style, written as a working note rather than a full recipe — the quantities were assumed to be in the cook's head. Everything here depends on getting the set right, since the mould must come out clean and stand up on the dish.
- No quantities are givenThe original lists no measures at all, so any figures are a reconstruction. A workable balance for a 1-litre border mould is about 300 ml tomato juice, 15 g powdered gelatine, 150 ml aspic, 150 ml cream and 3-4 tablespoons mayonnaise; taste and test a spoonful on a cold saucer before filling.
- Aspic jellyIn period usage this meant a clarified, well-seasoned meat or fish stock set with its own gelatine. A strong fish or light chicken stock set with gelatine and sharpened with a little lemon and tarragon vinegar is the nearest thing; commercial aspic powder is thinner in flavour but will set.
- "Whip the aspic jelly"The aspic must be chilled to the point of syrupy thickness before it will hold air. Too warm and it stays liquid; fully set and it breaks into lumps. Whisk it over ice until it is the consistency of unbeaten egg white, then fold in the whipped cream.
- Gelatine temperatureMelted gelatine hitting cold whipped cream sets in strings. Let it cool to just above blood heat and add it in a thin stream while whisking, or warm a ladle of the tomato mixture into it first.
- A border mouldA ring mould, plain or fluted. The decoration goes on first: dip blanched tarragon and chervil leaves and thin lobster slices in a little liquid aspic and press them against the chilled interior, letting each layer set before the next goes on, or the pattern floats.
- Mayonnaise and raw eggThe mayonnaise is never cooked, and the finished mould sits at room temperature on the table. Use pasteurised egg or a bought mayonnaise, keep the mould refrigerated until service, and do not hold leftovers.
- Setting and turning outAllow four hours in the refrigerator, or overnight. Dip the mould in warm water for a few seconds only, then invert onto a chilled dish; a wetted plate lets you slide the ring into position if it lands off centre.
- "Small salad"Period shorthand for fine salading — mustard and cress, corn salad, small lettuce hearts, shredded chervil — dressed lightly and piled in the centre at the last moment so it does not wilt against the cold jelly.
- YieldA 1-litre border serves six to eight as a first course or as part of a cold buffet.
Tarragon and chervil are two of the four classic fines herbes, and their appearance in the title of a lobster mould tells you the dish is meant to read as French. Chilled moulds of this kind were the backbone of high-class cold cookery in the decades either side of 1900: the buffet table, the ball supper and the shooting luncheon all called for food that could be built in the morning, kept in the larder on ice, and turned out looking architectural. Aspic was the enabling technology — a household that kept clarified stock jelly could set almost anything into a pattern, and cooks were judged on the neatness of the decoration pressed against the inside of the mould. Chervil, once a standard kitchen-garden herb in Britain, largely dropped out of English cooking during the twentieth century and is the ingredient most likely to send a modern reader looking further than the supermarket.