Lily Salad
Hard Boiled Eggs French Dressing Grated Cheese Salt, Pepper Place shelled, hard boiled eggs in cold salt water for one hour. Wipe dry, cut a thin slice from the large end of eggs, then with sharp knife, directing stroke from the small end downward; cut whites into sections like petals of water lilies. Mash yolks of eggs, mix with equal quantity of the grated cheese, moisten with the dressing, add salt and pepper, and arrange on lettuce leaves to simulate center of lily, arranging the whites for petals.
A garnish-salad from the era when a cold plate was expected to look like something other than food. The instructions assume you already know how to boil and peel an egg; everything that matters here is in the knife work.
- The hinge: cut from the small endWith the egg standing on its trimmed large end, slice down from the pointed tip toward the base, stopping short so the sections stay joined at the bottom. The recipe does not say how many cuts; something in the range of six to eight gives petals that splay outward, and the point of working downward from the tip is that the sections stay anchored at the base.
- The salt-water soakThe usual reason given for an hour in cold salted water is that it firms the whites so they cut without tearing or crumbling. It is not seasoning and not preservation.
- Cook the eggs to hold their shapeThe book gives no time. Around twelve minutes at a bare simmer, then straight into ice water, gives a fully set white that carves and a yolk dry enough to mash without gumminess. Hard boiling for a long stretch is what produces the grey-green ring and a tough white.
- French dressing, 1900 senseEssentially oil and vinegar with salt and pepper, shaken or whisked to a temporary emulsion; period recipes run anywhere from about two to one to three to one, and some add mustard or paprika. What it is not is anything creamy: a mayonnaise-based dressing will slump the filling.
- The grated cheeseEqual volume of cheese to yolk points toward a hard, dry grating cheese, Parmesan or a well-aged cheddar. Pre-shredded supermarket cheese carries an anti-caking coating that can make the filling pasty; grate your own on the fine side.
- Moisten, do not slackenAdd the dressing a teaspoon at a time. The yolk mixture has to sit in a mound at the center of the petals and hold there, so aim for the texture of a stiff paste rather than a spread.
- Yield and assemblyOne egg makes one lily, each on its own lettuce leaf, as a first course or a plate garnish for cold meat. Assemble not long before serving and keep chilled, as cut egg white dries out at the edges.
Cookbooks of the early twentieth century were as much about presentation as cookery, and the salad chapter is where that shows most plainly. A young housekeeper was expected to produce a cold course that read as decorative work, and eggs, being cheap, white, and firm, were the standard raw material for it: cut into daisies, baskets, chickens, and here into water lilies. The technique belongs to a tradition of trompe-l'oeil salads that runs through American and English domestic manuals from the 1890s into the 1930s, alongside candlestick salads, pear-and-clove mice, and molded aspics. The dressing named in the recipe is plain oil and vinegar, which in these books is generally what "French dressing" meant; the bottled sweet orange product that later took the name has no bearing here.