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Lobster Salad
Cut cold boiled lobster into small pieces. Marinate with French dressing; put on lettuce leaves; cover with mayonnaise and garnish with lobster claws, olives, hard-boiled eggs and capers.
A characteristically terse Royal Cook Book entry that assumes the cook already knows how to boil a lobster and mix two dressings. The quantities are entirely left to judgment, so the notes below fill in what the page omits.
- How much lobsterA 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb live lobster yields roughly 4 to 5 oz of picked meat, enough for one generous serving. For four people plan on four lobsters, or roughly a pound of picked meat, plus the claw shells for garnish.
- "French dressing" in this periodNot the sweet orange bottled dressing sold under that name today. In a 1920s American cookbook it means a plain vinaigrette: roughly three parts oil to one part vinegar or lemon juice, with salt and pepper, whisked or shaken just before use.
- The marinating step is the hingeDressing the warm-to-cool meat with vinaigrette for 15 to 30 minutes in the refrigerator is what keeps the salad from tasting flat under the mayonnaise. Much longer and the acid begins to firm and dull the lobster.
- Cook the lobster shortEight to ten minutes at a bare boil for a 1 1/4 lb lobster, then straight into ice water. Overcooked tail meat turns cottony and no amount of dressing hides it.
- MayonnaiseScratch mayonnaise of this period was built on raw yolks. If you make it from scratch, use pasteurized eggs, keep the finished salad cold, and serve it the same day; good jarred mayonnaise thinned with a little lemon juice is a fair substitute.
- Garnish, practicallyCrack the claws and reserve the shells intact for the plate, or split them lengthwise. The recipe's own combination is hard-boiled eggs, olives and capers; quarter the eggs, leave the olives whole, and drain the capers well so they do not weep into the mayonnaise.
- ServingAssemble on the plates rather than in a bowl, and dress at the last moment. Lettuce under a mayonnaise-coated salad wilts quickly.
The New Royal Cook Book was published by the Royal Baking Powder Company, and like other manufacturer cookbooks of the early twentieth century it surrounded its baking-powder recipes with general household cookery, salads included. Lobster salad belonged to a class of "company" dishes long familiar from American hotel and club menus: cold shellfish, a vinaigrette marinade, a blanket of mayonnaise, and an ornamental garnish of claws, olives, egg and capers arranged for display. The pattern resembles French service, where a mayonnaise de homard was dressed and decorated much the same way. That such a recipe could be printed in a few lines suggests how far the format was assumed knowledge; the cook was expected to supply the proportions, the timing and the arrangement herself.