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Shells of Fish and Mushrooms
Cut cold fish-salmon, halibut, lobster, etc. into small cubes, mix with one-third in measure of cooked mushrooms, also cut small, and add for each cup of mushrooms and fish one tablespoonful of gherkins cut fine. Season with French dressing and let stand one hour; then drain, and mix with jellied mayonnaise. Fill chilled shells with this preparation, rounding it on the top.
Make smooth, and mask with jellied mayonnaise.
Decorate with gherkins and the white of a hardboiled egg cut in fanciful shapes, and with stars of mayonnaise.
A cold composed salad in the chaud-froid manner, where the binding is not plain mayonnaise but mayonnaise stiffened with gelatin so it will coat and hold a shape. Two things decide whether it works: the drain after marinating, and the temperature of the jellied mayonnaise when you use it.
- Jellied mayonnaiseMayonnaise into which softened gelatin, dissolved in a little hot water or stock, has been stirred; the quantity is a matter of trial, enough to set softly without turning rubbery. Use it while barely fluid; once it begins to set it will smear rather than mask, and it cannot be rewarmed without breaking.
- The shellsReal scallop shells or silver-plated coquille shells, chilled hard before filling. Ramekins or small gratin dishes stand in perfectly well. Figure one shell per person as a first course.
- Drain thoroughlyThe French dressing is a one-hour marinade, not part of the finished dish. Any oil or vinegar left clinging will thin the gelatin and the mask will slump. Drain in a sieve, then blot the cubes.
- Marinate coldHold the hour of marinating in the refrigerator, not on the counter. Cooked fish and shellfish held at room temperature is the one real risk in an otherwise cold, gently handled dish.
- ProportionsOne part mushrooms to three parts fish by volume, plus a tablespoon of finely chopped gherkins for each cup of the combined mixture. Cooked mushrooms means simmered or sauteed and cooled, not raw.
- Raw eggPeriod mayonnaise was made with uncooked yolks and served cold. If you make your own, use pasteurized eggs; commercial mayonnaise takes the gelatin just as well.
- Setting and decorationChill the filled shells until the mask is firm before piping the mayonnaise stars, or the decoration sinks into the surface. Cut the hard-boiled white with a small aspic cutter or the tip of a paring knife.
- Fish choiceAny firm cold cooked fish works; salmon and lobster give color against the pale mask, though the recipe offers halibut too. Flaky fish such as cod will not hold cubes.
Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing Dish Dainties came out of the Boston Cooking School circle at the turn of the twentieth century, and this recipe belongs to its most fashionable register: the cold, molded, masked salad borrowed from professional French practice. Coating a cold item in a gelatin-set sauce is the technique the French call chaud-froid, and jellied mayonnaise is a relative of it, giving the same smooth opaque finish without a stockpot of clarified aspic. The scallop shell as a serving vessel for this fish salad turns up in American entertaining of the 1890s and 1900s, and "stars of mayonnaise" assumes the reader owns a pastry bag and a set of tin tubes. The gherkins do real work here: sharp acidity to cut a dish that is otherwise fish, mushroom and emulsified oil.