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Lobster Salad
Chop up one can of lobsters; cut in small pieces as much celery. Then cream with one teacup butter, one tablespoonful mustard, one tablespoonful sugar, one teaspoonful salt and yolks of four hard-boiled eggs, rubbed smooth; stir in five tablespoonfuls pepper vinegar (simply pepper steeped in vinegar and sweetened with a little sugar), and pour the mixture over the lobster and celery.--Mrs. S. T.
This is a butter dressing rather than a mayonnaise — the fat is creamed, not emulsified into oil — so temperature control is the whole game.
- The hinge: keep it softButter creamed with cooked yolks sets hard when chilled, and the salad turns to gravel in the refrigerator. Cream the butter at cool room temperature (65-70F), dress the lobster shortly before serving, and let the bowl stand out 20 minutes if it has been refrigerated.
- One teacup butterA teacup of the period is usually reckoned at somewhere between half a cup and three-quarters of a cup, so roughly 4 to 6 oz of butter — a very rich dressing by modern standards. Half that amount, with a spoonful of the pepper vinegar added back for looseness, gives a coating rather than a paste.
- One can of lobsterCanned lobster of the period was commonly sold in one-pound tins, though other sizes existed. Use about 1 lb cooked lobster meat, or two of today's smaller cans, drained and picked over for cartilage.
- MustardA tablespoonful of mustard here most likely means dry mustard powder rather than prepared jarred mustard, though the recipe does not specify. Prepared mustard will give a milder, more acidic dressing; start with two teaspoons of powder and taste.
- Pepper vinegarThe parenthesis is the recipe: hot peppers steeped in vinegar with a little sugar. Bottled Southern pepper vinegar works directly; otherwise steep two or three small hot peppers, split, in 1/2 cup cider vinegar for a few days with a pinch of sugar. Five tablespoons is a lot of heat and acid at once — add three, then adjust.
- Rubbing the yolks smoothPress the hard-boiled yolks through a fine sieve before they meet the butter. Mashed with a fork they leave grainy specks that no amount of stirring will smooth out.
- Celery"As much celery" means equal volume to the lobster — about 2 cups diced. Use the pale inner ribs; outer stalks are too stringy for a salad this rich.
- YieldServes four to six as a first course or luncheon dish, on lettuce or in the celery leaves. Salt cautiously: canned lobster is already salted.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives, was published at a moment when canned lobster was briefly one of the cheapest luxuries in America. Canneries along the Maine and Maritime coasts were shipping tinned lobster by the trainload in the 1870s, which is why an inland Virginia household could treat it as a pantry staple rather than a seaside indulgence — the stocks collapsed within a generation. The dressing is equally of its period: cooked-yolk dressings were common in English and American cookery before oil-based mayonnaise became the household default, though the butter-creamed version seen here was a less usual variant, and the type survives in the boiled dressings of later Southern cookbooks. The pepper vinegar is the local signature, a Virginia and Carolina condiment kept on the table for greens and cold meats and here folded straight into the sauce.