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Shrimp Salad with Aspic Border
Set a border mould in ice water; dip hard-boiled eggs, cut in halves lengthwise and trimmed to fit the mould, in aspic jelly, and press against the sides of the mould alternately with small vegetable balls, or peas dipped in half-set aspic; fill gradually the empty space in the mould with partly cooled jelly, adding vegetables here and there if desired. Dip in hot water and turn from the mould. Fill in the centre with lettuce, torn in pieces, and one pint of shrimps, broken in pieces and dressed with French dressing. Smooth the mound and mask with jelly mayonnaise. Decorate with shrimps and small heart leaves of lettuce.
A composed aspic ring from the era when a moulded salad was the centrepiece of a luncheon table. The work is all in the layering, and it depends entirely on keeping the jelly at the right stage of setting.
- The hinge: half-set jellyAspic used for sticking eggs and vegetables to the mould must be syrupy and just beginning to thicken, not liquid. Liquid jelly runs off and the decorations slide down the sides; set jelly will not bond to the next layer. Keep the working bowl over ice and stop pouring the moment it thickens, then warm it briefly to loosen it again.
- Aspic jellyThe book assumes a separately made savoury jelly: well-flavoured stock cleared with egg white and set with gelatine, or a strong homemade shellfish or veal stock that jells on its own. With modern powdered gelatine, one envelope (about 2 1/4 teaspoons) per two cups of liquid is the usual ratio; for a border firm enough to unmould and hold its shape, err on the side of less liquid.
- Border mouldA ring mould, plain or fluted, of about 1 to 1 1/2 quarts. A metal ring transmits cold better than glass or silicone and will unmould more cleanly. Chilling it in ice water first, as directed, is what lets the first thin coat of jelly grip the sides.
- Vegetable ballsCut with a Parisian cutter, what we now call a melon baller, from cooked carrot, turnip or beetroot. Cook them until just tender and dry them well; wet vegetables dilute the jelly around them and leave cloudy halos.
- One pint of shrimpsA pint here is a volume of picked, cooked shrimp meat, roughly 12 to 14 ounces. In 1900 this often came from a can; use cooked, peeled small or medium shrimp, and keep the best-looking whole ones back for the decoration.
- Jelly mayonnaiseMayonnaise with a little dissolved gelatine or half-set aspic stirred in, so it sets to a coating rather than running. It must be poured while barely fluid and over a thoroughly chilled mound, or it slides off. The related classical preparation made with a white sauce and gelatine instead of mayonnaise is a chaud-froid sauce.
- UnmouldingDip only two or three seconds in hot water, wipe the outside, and invert onto a chilled platter. Longer and the outer layer melts, blurring the decoration you have just spent half an hour arranging.
- Serving and holdingServes six to eight as a luncheon dish. Assemble it the day before if you like, but keep it refrigerated until the moment it goes to table; a gelatine and shellfish salad should not sit out more than about two hours.
This comes from Janet McKenzie Hill's Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties, written while she was editing the Boston Cooking School Magazine at the turn of the twentieth century, and it belongs squarely to the moment when American cookery discovered commercial gelatine. Cheap packaged gelatine, which became widely available towards the end of the nineteenth century, put the moulded and glazed work of the professional French kitchen within reach of a household cook, and books of this period are full of borders, chaud-froid masks and jellied decorations that would previously have required a chef and a calf's foot. The border mould itself is usually taken to be a French idea: the ring of aspic supplies a formal architecture, the centre carries the perishable, dressed salad, and the whole thing can be built hours ahead and carried to the table intact. Shrimp was a natural filling because canned shrimp was widely available and reliably uniform, and because its pink reads well against green lettuce and clear jelly, which is largely the point of a dish like this one.