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Fish Salads (Marinate while hot with three)
fish. Marinate, while hot, with three tablespoonfuls of oil, one tablespoonful of vinegar or lemon juice, and salt and pepper. When cold put the fish on a serving-dish, and, using endive or Boston Market lettuce, put the ends of the leaves beneath the fish, so that the tops of the leaves will fall over upon the fish. Garnish the top with stars of mayonnaise. Between the leaves dispose sliced pim-olas and fans cut from small gherkins. Serve mayonnaise with the salad.
The page as printed begins mid-sentence, so the quantity of fish is lost: treat it as roughly a pound of cooked, flaked or sliced firm fish. Everything else is a straightforward oil-and-acid marinade dressed up for a cold buffet.
- Dress the fish warmThis is the hinge. Warm fish absorbs the oil and acid; cold fish sheds it and the dressing pools on the plate. Flake or slice it as soon as it is cool enough to handle, dress it, then chill.
- The marinade proportionsThree tablespoons oil to one of vinegar or lemon juice is a standard 3:1 vinaigrette, enough for about a pound of fish. Salmon, halibut, cod and haddock all suit it; oily smoked fish does not need the extra oil.
- Boston Market lettuceAn old market name for the soft butterhead types now sold as Boston or Bibb. Whole cupped leaves are what the recipe wants, since the tops are meant to drape over the fish.
- Pim-olasA trade name of the period for green olives stuffed with pimiento. Any pimiento-stuffed olive, sliced crosswise into rings, gives the same effect.
- Gherkin fansCut a small sour gherkin lengthwise in thin slices, stopping short of the stem end, then press the slices apart so they spread. Firm cornichons hold the shape better than soft sweet pickles.
- Stars of mayonnaisePiped through a small star tip. The mayonnaise needs to be stiff enough to hold its edges; a thin homemade emulsion will slump within minutes on a chilled plate.
- Holding and servingKeep the assembled dish refrigerated until it goes to the table and do not leave dressed cooked fish out more than about two hours. A pound of fish dressed this way serves four as a first course or lunch salad.
Cold fish salads of this kind were a practical answer to a common problem in a household that cooked large pieces of fish: what to do with yesterday's boiled salmon or halibut. Dressing the fish while still warm is borrowed from French practice, where cooked fish, potatoes and beans are all marinated hot for the same reason, and it is advice often repeated in American cooking-school writing around the turn of the century. The elaborate garnish is very much of its moment, when the salad course was judged as much by appearance as by flavor and pimiento-stuffed olives and bottled gherkins were becoming widely available in jars. "Pim-ola" was a brand name of the era that for a time served as a generic term, the way a few trademarks still do; the trade name was in use over a fairly long span, however, so its appearance in a recipe is not by itself a safe guide to a text's date.