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Mayonnaise of Salmon
INGREDIENTS. - Cold boiled salmon, 2 lettuces, a little beetroot and watercress, 3 hard-boiled eggs, a very little oil and vinegar, pepper and salt, 1/4 pint of Mayonnaise sauce. AVERAGE COST, exclusive of the cold salmon, 1s.
Thoroughly wash and dry the lettuces and use the outer leaves, sprinkled with oil and vinegar, to lay on the dish as a foundation for the Mayonnaise. Upon these lay in a circle overlapping one another, small cutlets of the salmon well masked in the sauce. In the centre and around these put the remainder of the lettuce shredded finely, and the cress cut up, using first the hearts of the lettuces, then little groups of watercress and decorating these with the best sort and egg, so as to make pretty contrasting colours in the border; then put the remainder of the sauce on the top.
SEASONABLE in summer.
MAY, DINNERS FOR.
May-Dinner for Twelve Persons.
MENU. (English.) Quantity. Average 8. d.
Spring Soup. 2 quarts 26 Turbot. 1 fish. 76 Whitebait. 3 pints. 56 Chicken Patties. 12 30 Sirloin. 1 joint. 70 Potatoes. 4 lbs. 04 Brussels Sprouts. 4 lbs. 10 Asparagus. 100 40 Noyeau Cream. 2 mlds. 30 Iced Pudding. 1 50 £1 18 10 MENU. (French.) Printanière.
Turbot.
Blanchailles.
Petits Patés de Volaille.
Aloyau.
Pommes de Terre.
Choux de Bruxelles.
Asperges.
Crême au Noyeau.
Pouding Glacée.
May-Dinner for Ten Persons.
MENU. (English.) Quantity. Average 8. d.
Almond Soup. 3 pints. 40 Salmon, Genevese Sauce. 3 lbs. 1 tur. 56 10 Lamb Cutlets. 3 lbs. 30 Asparagus. 100 36 Roast Fowls. 1 pair. 60 1 70 3 lbs. 03 1½ peck. 16 1 dish. 26 1 mould. 20 £1 16 3 MENU. (French.) Potage Lait d'Amandes.
Saumon, Sauce Génévèse.
Côtelettes d'Agneau.
Asperges.
Volailles.
Ham.
Potatoes.
Peas.
Vol au Vent of Gooseberries.
Marbled Jelly.
Jambon.
Pommes de Terre..
Petits Pois.
Vol au Vent de Groseilles.
Gelée Marbrée.
May-Dinner for Eight Persons.
MENU. (English.) Quantity. Average 8. d.
Spring Soup.
Fillets of Turbot, Italian Sauce. 3 pints. 20 3 lbs. 40 1 tur. 09 Curried Lobster. 1 dish. 40 Leg of Lamb.
Potatoes. 1 joint. 56 3 lbs. 03 Peas. 1½ peck. 16 Curaçoa Soufflé.
Gooseberry Tart.
Custard. 1 pint. £1 26 MENU. (French.) Printanière.
Filets de Turbot, Sauce Italienne.
Homard au Kari.
Gigot d'Agneau.
Pommes de Terre.
Petits Pois.
Soufflé de Curaçoa.
Tourte aux Groseilles.
Crême.
MAY, DINNERS FOR.
May-Dinners for from Six to Twelve Persons.
MENU MENU Julienne.
Brill, Dutch Sauce.
Lobster Cream.
Turkey Poult.
Ham.
Potatoes. Sprouts.
Salad.
Rhubarb Tart. Custard.
Liqueur Jelly. 2 White Soup.
Salmon Cutlets, Sauce à l'Aurore.
Stewed Pigeons.
Fillet of Beef, with Spanish Sauce.
Potatoes.
Russian Salad.
Vol-au-Vent of Fruit.
Lemon Cream.
Menur Appetisans..
Spring Soup.
Red Mullet.
Lamb Cutlets.
Ducklings.
Potatoes.
Peas.
Vanilla Soufflé.
Marbled Jelly.
Clear Soup.
Fried Filleted Soles, Tartar Sauce.
Leg of Mutton.
Potatoes.
Stewed Celery.
Asparagus.
Lemon Cheesecakes.
Blancmange.
MAY, DINNER TABLE.
May-Plain Family Dinners for.
No. 1.
Sunday:-Roast fillet of veal, ham, vege tables. Gooseberry tart, whipped cream or custard.
A composed cold platter rather than a sauce recipe: poached salmon coated in mayonnaise and set on a bed of dressed lettuce. The instructions assume you already have cold cooked salmon and made mayonnaise on hand, and the printed page runs straight on into a series of unrelated May dinner menus.
- Quantity of salmonThe ingredient list gives no weight, and the cost line's exclusion of the salmon suggests the fish was likely already cooked for an earlier meal. For ten people as a first or luncheon course, allow 2 1/2 to 3 lb of cooked salmon, which is roughly 4 lb of fish on the bone.
- A quarter pint of mayonnaiseAn imperial quarter-pint is 5 fl oz, about two-thirds of a US cup. That is enough to coat thinly, not to drown; if you want a thick mask on every portion plus a spoonful over the top, make double.
- "Cutlets"In Victorian fish cookery a cutlet is a thick slice cut across the fish, bone in. Boneless portions of about 2 inches, or neat flakes pressed into shape, do the same job and are easier to overlap in a ring.
- "Masked"Masking means coating the surface so the fish is hidden. The mayonnaise must be stiff enough to cling; if it slumps, chill it for twenty minutes or beat in a little more oil before using.
- "The best sort and egg"A garbled line in this printing, and the intended wording is uncertain; the beetroot listed among the ingredients may be what has been mangled here. The sense is that the best of the garnish and the hard-boiled egg were arranged with the beetroot and cress for colour contrast in the border.
- BeetrootAssume cooked beetroot, cut small. Add it at the last moment and keep it clear of the mayonnaise, or the whole dish turns pink.
- Raw egg in the sauceBeeton's mayonnaise is uncooked yolk and oil, and this dish sits out on a serving table. Use pasteurised egg for the sauce if you are serving anyone frail, and keep the assembled platter refrigerated until it goes to the table.
- The cost lineOne shilling excluding the salmon is a note for the household accounts, not a modern guide; the salmon was the expensive part and was assumed to be already paid for.
Under Victorian usage a "mayonnaise" was as often a composed cold dish as a sauce, and the name attached to whatever was masked with it: mayonnaise of salmon, of chicken, of lobster. Salmon was a spring and early summer fish in Britain, and this entry is marked "seasonable in summer"; it would have been a natural use for fish left from a boiled salmon served hot the day before. The construction is period practice: coarse outer lettuce leaves dressed with oil and vinegar as an edible foundation, the fish laid in an overlapping ring, and the border built up in deliberate bands of green, white, red and yellow. Cold table dishes in the later nineteenth century were judged in good part on that colour arrangement, echoing the elaborate cold buffets of professional kitchens that books like this one taught middle-class households to imitate on a smaller scale.