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Capers
butter.
Method. - Cut the eggs into halves lengthwise; cut a thin slice from the round ends, that the pieces may be set upright; dip lightly in the gelatine dissolved over hot water, and arrange miroton fashion around an oval serving-dish. Set aside, that the eggs may become fixed in position. Marinate the vegetables, separately, with French dressing; cook the salmon by the directions previously given; remove the skin and cover the sides with jelly mayonnaise or fancy butter. When cold decorate with whites of eggs and capers. Use the trimmings from the eggs, and fix them in place by dipping in jelly mayonnaise. Set aside for the decorations to become fixed. Drain the vegetables and arrange inside the border, higher in the centre. Lay the decorated slices of fish upon opposite sides of the mound, and serve either with or without mayonnaise.
What survives here is the assembly method for a cold composed salmon salad in the late-Victorian salade russe manner: a border of halved hard-boiled eggs, a mound of dressed vegetables, and glazed slices of salmon laid over the top. The quantities and the opening of the ingredient list are not present, so treat this as a working plan rather than a measured recipe.
- The hinge: work cold and in stagesEvery element must be thoroughly chilled and each set of decorations allowed to firm before the next is added. Gelatine and jelly mayonnaise are the glue; if the dish is warm or hurried, the egg border slides and the whole construction collapses.
- "Miroton fashion"Nineteenth-century kitchen shorthand for overlapping pieces set on edge in a ring; the term is usually connected to the ringed sliced onions of a miroton, though that derivation is traditional rather than documented. The trimmed flat end on each egg half is what lets it stand upright against its neighbour.
- Jelly mayonnaiseMayonnaise stiffened with dissolved gelatine or aspic so it sets to a coating. The recipe gives no proportions; a small quantity of bloomed and melted gelatine per cup of mayonnaise is enough, and it must be used while just fluid and poured over cold fish in thin coats.
- Fancy butterButter creamed with a flavouring and colouring agent -- anchovy, lobster coral, green herb paste -- then piped or spread. It is a decorative coating, not a sauce, and behaves only if both butter and fish are cold.
- French dressing hereIn books of this period the term generally means oil and vinegar with salt and pepper, oil predominating. Marinating each vegetable separately keeps strongly coloured ones from bleeding into the rest; drain well or the dressing pools at the base of the mound.
- Cooking the salmonThe recipe refers back to directions not present on this page, so the method and timing are unknown. Cook it only until just set; overcooked salmon goes dry and chalky under a glaze.
- CapersDrain and pat them dry before setting them in the glaze. Brine clinging to a caper will thin the mayonnaise around it and leave a wet halo on the finished coating.
- Yield and serviceNo quantities survive on this page, so the yield cannot be given; it is built as a luncheon or buffet centrepiece. It must be assembled the day of serving and held refrigerated; a gelatine-set salad left out at room temperature is not safe past two hours.
Cold moulded and bordered salads like this one belong to the high period of the American chafing-dish and luncheon book, when a hostess without a French chef was still expected to produce something that looked as though she had one. The technique is straight from professional garde-manger practice: fish coated in mayonnaise collée, vegetables bound and mounded, everything fixed with aspic and decorated with cut whites of egg and capers. Salmon was the natural choice because it poaches whole, slices cleanly, and holds its colour under a pale glaze. Capers themselves are the pickled flower buds of Capparis spinosa, imported from the Mediterranean and shelved in American pantries as a keeping ingredient.