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Fish Salads (Lemon juice Use three measures)
and lemon juice. Use three measures of oil to one of acid. Begin with the oil. Continue mixing and adding oil, until each piece is glossy. Then add the acid. Mix the prepared sprouts and the drained shrimps, and turn them onto a bed of lettuce, cut in narrow shreds, and dressed with oil and acid. Decorate the salad with heart leaves of lettuce, whole shrimps, and hollow sections of bamboo, cut in thin slices.
Bluefish Salad (excellent).
Separate the remnants of a baked bluefish into flakes, discarding skin and bones. Set aside, covered, until cold. About an hour before serving, sprinkle with salt and pepper and (for a generous pint of fish) the juice of a lemon. When ready to serve, dispose heart leaves of lettuce on the edge of a salad plate, and turn the fish into the centre, letting it come out over the stems of the lettuce leaves. Pour a boiled dressing over the top, and spread evenly (with a silver knife) over the fish.
Put a tablespoonful of chopped pickled beet at the stems of each group of leaves, a ring of the beet near the top, and figures, cut from the beet, between.
Two salads run together here, the page beginning mid-sentence in the middle of a shrimp-and-bean-sprout salad and continuing into the bluefish. Both depend on cold cooked fish and a dressing built in a specific order.
- Three measures of oil to one of acidThat is the classic 3:1 vinaigrette ratio, still the standard. The instruction to begin with the oil and toss until every piece is glossy before adding the acid is the hinge of the first salad: oil-coated fish and sprouts stay separate and firm, while acid hitting them first draws out water and turns the mixture flabby.
- "Sprouts" and bambooThe page begins mid-sentence, so what the "prepared sprouts" are is not stated; bean sprouts, blanched briefly and drained, are the likeliest reading given the bamboo alongside them. Bamboo shoots sliced thin serve for the "hollow sections of bamboo."
- Drained shrimpsCanned shrimp, small and soft, was widely sold and used in this period, and "drained" fits it; freshly boiled and drained shrimp fits equally. Cooked and peeled small shrimp work directly; rinse and dry canned ones well, since their packing liquid will thin the dressing.
- Boiled dressingNot a vinaigrette but a cooked custard-style dressing of egg yolk, vinegar, mustard, a little flour or cornstarch and butter or cream, thickened over hot water and chilled. It is thick enough to spread, which is why the recipe says to spread it. Any modern boiled or cooked salad dressing recipe substitutes; so does mayonnaise thinned with a little lemon juice, though the result is richer.
- A generous pint of fishA little over 2 cups of flakes, enough for four as a lunch course. The juice of one lemon to that quantity is assertive; bluefish is oily and takes it well.
- The silver knifeSilver was specified because carbon steel blades of the period discolored acidic food and left a metallic taste. Stainless steel or a small offset spatula does the job now with no such trouble.
- Cooling the fish"Set aside, covered, until cold" meant a larder or icebox. Cool the flaked fish and refrigerate it, and dress it about the hour ahead the recipe allows.
- Pickled beet garnishThe chopped beet, the ring and the cut "figures" are period plate decoration, cut freehand or with small garnish cutters. Beet bleeds colour into a pale dressing quickly, so set the pieces on at the last moment if the look matters.
This appears to come from Janet McKenzie Hill's Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties, though the attribution cannot be confirmed from the page itself; it belongs to a run of turn-of-the-century American books built around light, cold, composed dishes for luncheon and supper. Bluefish was the obvious candidate: abundant along the whole Atlantic seaboard, cheap in season, and oily enough to eat well cold, which is exactly the situation the recipe addresses when it speaks of "the remnants of a baked bluefish." What the dishes share is the period's conviction that a salad was as much an arrangement as a dish he beart leaves laid around the rim, the whole thing assembled on the plate rather than tossed in a bowl.