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Fish Salad Moulded in Aspic, No. 2
Decorate the mould as before; then put in a layer of the fish and dressing; when set, add a layer of aspic; alternate the layers until the materials are used or the mould is filled. Individual moulds may be prepared in the same way.
Salad of Mackerel or Bluefish.
Separate a cooked fish into flakes and mix with the chopped whites and sifted yolks of three hardboiled eggs. Season with French dressing, mix lightly and turn on to a bed of lettuce or cress, also seasoned with the dressing. Garnish with fans cut from small gherkins, or with pickled beet cut in fanciful shape or chopped.
This entry continues from a previous recipe, so it assumes you already have aspic jelly, a decorated mould and a dressed fish mixture on hand. The second half, the mackerel or bluefish salad, stands on its own.
- What "as before" meansThe preceding recipe is not reproduced here, but the standard method was to coat a chilled mould with a thin film of liquid aspic, let it set, then lay decorations into a second thin film. Chill each layer firm before adding the next or the pattern slides.
- Aspic in practicePeriod aspic was clarified fish or veal stock set with sheet gelatine or homemade calf's-foot jelly. A workable modern substitute is about 2 1/2 teaspoons powdered gelatine per 2 cups well-flavoured fish stock, which unmoulds cleanly without being rubbery. It should be cool and syrupy, not warm, when poured over the fish, or it will loosen the layer below and set cloudy.
- The hinge: each layer must set before the nextAdding aspic to a layer of dressed fish that has not firmed will muddle the two into a single opaque mass. Give each layer 20 to 30 minutes in the refrigerator, and keep the remaining aspic at room temperature so it stays pourable.
- Dressing and gelatineA mayonnaise-based dressing holds up in aspic; a thin vinaigrette will weep and stop the jelly setting properly around it. If you are layering French dressing with fish, drain the fish well first.
- French dressingIn cookbooks of this period the term means oil and vinegar with salt and pepper, roughly three parts oil to one of vinegar, whisked to a temporary emulsion. It is not the sweet orange bottled dressing of the same name.
- Chilling and holding timeThe original assumes an icebox and a cook who serves promptly. Set the mould in the refrigerator, not at cellar temperature, and eat it within 24 hours. Cooked fish bound in a moist jelly is a good medium for bacteria once it warms.
- UnmouldingDip the mould to its rim in warm — not hot — water for eight to ten seconds, run a thin knife around the edge, and invert onto a chilled plate. Individual moulds need about half that time in the water.
- YieldThe recipe gives no mould size or fish weight; only the three hardboiled eggs are specified. As a rough guide, a pint mould will serve about four as a first course, and the mackerel or bluefish salad made from one medium cooked fish with three eggs will serve four to six.
Moulded aspic salads sat at the fashionable end of American cooking around 1900, when reliable commercial gelatine had made a dish that once demanded hours of boiling calves' feet into something a middle-class household could attempt. The appeal was visual: a cold buffet or luncheon table was judged on the glitter of the jelly and the neatness of the decoration set into it, and cookery schools of the period taught mould work as a distinct skill. Mackerel and bluefish, both oily and cheap along the Atlantic coast, were the everyday counterweight to that display — the second recipe here is essentially a way to use up a cooked fish, dressed and garnished until it looked deliberate. The gherkin fans and shaped pickled beet belong to the same decorative habit, and turn up throughout salad chapters of the era as the standard finish for anything cold and pale.