Home › Recipes › Hamburg Salad
Hamburg Salad
2 large boiled potatoes cut in dice. 1 cupful of celery, same way. 1/2 cupful each of smoked halibut, dried beef and red smoked tongue all cut small. 1 small onion. 2 cloves of garlic finely minced. 1 or 2 red peppers out of the pickle jar. 6 hard-boiled eggs.
The dried beef and tongue should be first cooked by boiling several hours. The celery is better if blanched (parboiled.) Mix all, except the eggs, in a bowl and shake about with oil poured in till the mixture looks rich and glossy, then add a cupful of vinegar. Ornament with the yolks of eggs chopped fine and the whites cut in strips.
A German Salad--Herring Salad. 1 or 2 large smoked herrings. 1 cupful of pickled red cabbage, chopped small. 1 cupful of slices of salsify or oyster plant--cooked. 1 cupful of chopped white cabbage. Pepper, salt, oil, vinegar.
Free the meat of the herrings from bones and skin and mince it as nearly in dice shape as may be. The salsify may be substituted with potatoes if necessary, cut in dice or lozenge shapes. Mix all with oil, vinegar, pepper and salt.
While we are yet exploring for strong and pungent ingredients with which perhaps some knowing one might "unwonted richness to the salad give," it may be noticed that the repertory of the salad-making D'Albignac of Limousin included both caviare and truffles. People who enjoy anchovy toast; which is toast spread with anchovy paste or anchovy butter, or canapes aux anchois; pieces of toast with filleted anchovies, will doubtless like canapes au caviare. These are all good salad accompaniments, and as anchovies are commonly used in salads there is no good reason why caviare might not, but it is more likely it was used only in the way of decoration. As to what caviare is--and it used to be termed Russian caviare as if it had been of Russian invention--the Scientific American gives this information: "Hyde Park, some eighty-three miles up the Hudson River from New York, is one of the principal fishing stations for sturgeon, whose roe, when properly prepared, is known as caviare, a food preparation greatly enjoyed by our German and French citizens, not to forget the Russians, to whom we export large quantities every year. The roe weighs about one-third as much as the fish. A fifty pound roe is considered a large roe, thirty pounds being the average. As soon as the sturgeons reach shore they are opened and the roes taken out. Masses of roe are rubbed through wire seives. The eggs are then salted for a short time, after which they are laid on hair seives to drain off. When thoroughly drained what was but a short time ago only halibut spawn, is now the toothsome caviare of which thousands of pounds are annually spread on bread and eaten with much relish."
Caviare, like every other eatable thing, can now be bought in cans. It is black nearly as truffles. Softened with a little warm butter it can be used with good effect to ornament dishes of fish salads in piping and leaf patterns. In the times when fashionable ladies used to decorate their faces with huge patches of fancy patterns stamped out of court plaster, and white, and yellow dishes on the table had the same done for them with truffle slices, it is very likely a similar service was required for fish en mayonaise, of the high-flavored caviare.