Oyster Salad
Allow five oysters to each person, mayonnaise dressing, lettuce. Parboil the oysters in their own liquor and drain immediately; when cold cut each into four bits. Break the tender young leaves of lettuce and mix in equal parts with the oysters, macerate it with a part of the mayonnaise. Arrange the salad in nests of crisp lettuce leaves, covering it with the remainder of the mayonnaise dressing.
Lincoln Salad. (Mrs. Lincoln.) One quart oysters, three cucumbers, one teaspoonful of salt, one saltspoonful black pepper, one bunch watercresses, cream dressing to moisten. Pick over the oysters and parboil until the edges curl, drain very dry, cool and cut into small uniform pieces. Pare the cucumbers and leave in cold water until needed. Then cut into quarters, lengthwise (sixths if very large), trim off the edge containing the seeds, then dry on a towel and cut into thin slices. Season them highly with salt and black pepper and add them to the oysters. Moisten with cream dressing, turn into a salad bowl lined with cresses, put some of the best sprigs on the edge, and cover with the remainder of the dressing.
Cream Dressing for Lincoln Salad.
One-half pint thick cream, three tablespoonfuls of lemon juice, three tablespoonfuls of grated horse radish, one-half teaspoonful of salt, one saltspoonful each of paprika and black pepper.
Chill and whip the cream until stiff. Use Dover beater or whisk. Add gradually the lemon juice, horse radish, salt, paprika and black pepper. It should be stiff enough to keep in shape. After mixing half or two-thirds of it with the oysters and cucumbers, taste and add more seasoning if needed.
Two oyster salads run together here: a plain mayonnaise version and Mrs. Lincoln's, dressed with whipped cream sharpened by lemon and horseradish. Both hinge on the same thing — the oysters must be barely cooked and then dried hard, or the dressing turns to gray soup.
- Parboil means seconds, not minutesHeat the oysters in their own liquor just until the edges ruffle, roughly 30 to 60 seconds after the liquor trembles. Longer and they shrink and go rubbery, and the pieces will weep liquid into the dressing.
- Dry them properly"Drain very dry" is the instruction that decides the dish. Spread the cooled oysters on paper towels and blot before cutting; any clinging liquor will thin whipped cream dressing within minutes.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. A gill, if you meet one elsewhere in this book, is half a cup.
- QuantitiesA quart of shucked oysters is about 2 lb, roughly 25 to 40 medium oysters, so the Lincoln salad serves six to eight. The first recipe's five oysters per person is a light first course.
- Thick creamUse heavy or whipping cream at 36% fat; anything lighter will not hold shape once the lemon juice goes in. A "Dover beater" is a hand-cranked rotary eggbeater — a whisk or a mixer on medium does the same job.
- HorseradishThree tablespoons grated fresh horseradish is assertive. Bottled prepared horseradish works, but squeeze out the vinegar brine first or the cream will slacken and taste sour rather than hot.
- CucumbersOlder cucumber varieties were likely seedier and more bitter, which may be why the recipe pares, quarters and trims out the seed edge. With modern thin-skinned varieties, seed and slice thin, salt lightly, then drain 15 minutes and blot rather than seasoning "highly" and adding straight in.
- MayonnaiseThe first version's dressing would have been made by hand with raw yolks. Commercial mayonnaise or pasteurized eggs avoid the issue; if you make it fresh, keep the salad refrigerated and serve it the same day.
- Assembly"Macerate" here simply means toss the oysters and lettuce with part of the dressing so they take up seasoning. Dress at the last moment — lettuce and cress collapse quickly under cream.
The Mrs. Lincoln credited here is Mary J. Lincoln, author of Mrs. Lincoln's Boston Cook Book (1884) and the first principal of the Boston Cooking School. Oyster salads belong to a period when shucked oysters were among the cheapest protein on the Atlantic seaboard, sold by the quart from barrels and shipped inland by rail in ice, so a dish that would now read as luxurious was then simply a way to stretch a common ingredient into something for company. The whipped-cream-and-horseradish dressing is characteristic of turn-of-the-century salad books, which leaned on cream where a French kitchen would have used oil, and paprika in American cookery — for color and mild heat.