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Lobster Salad
(1). Cut the meat of a lobster in long thin strips, then cut these into dice. Place them in an earthenware bowl, and season with four tablespoonfuls of vinegar, two tablespoonfuls of oil, and a little salt and pepper. Wash well a lettuce and shake in a wire-basket to free it from water. Place two or three leaves together in the form of a shell, and arrange these shells together on a flat dish. Mix one-half of the mayonnaise dressing with the lobster, put a little of this in each cluster of leaves, and pour over a little more of the dressing. Garnish the border of the dish with whole leaves. (2). This salad should be served as soon as it is made. Choose a medium-sized lobster, and quite alive; plunge it head first into a large pot of boiling water, and boil for about twenty minutes, or until the shell is quite red. Allow the lobster to cool until it can be handled, then remove it from the shell, using a can-opener to separate it; save all the coral, green fat, and flesh of the lobster. Throw away the intestine which runs through the flesh of the tail, the membranous sac which lies at the back of the eyes, the "dead men" or soft fins which lie under the small legs close to the body, and the shell, cutting the lobster into square pieces about one inch in size. While the lobster is being prepared boil two eggs hard, remove the shells, and cut them into quarters. Carefully wash and dry two medium-sized heads of lettuce, cut them into quarters and keep them in a cool place. Put into a saucepan four tablespoonfuls each of butter and vinegar, one mustard spoonful of made mustard, one-fourth saltspoonful of pepper, and one saltspoonful of salt, a sprinkling of cayenne and the lobster, and place the saucepan over the fire; arrange the lettuce round the sides of a salad-bowl, stir the lobster until it is hot, pour it into the salad-bowl, garnish with the hard-boiled eggs, and serve at once. The success of this salad depends upon the celerity with which it is made and served. (3). Remove the flesh from two freshly-boiled lobsters, keeping the shells (which should be nicely washed and reserved for further use) as whole as possible. Chop the flesh fine, and mix it with a good mayonnaise salad-dressing. Wash and cut some lettuces into thin shreds, pile them in the center of an oval-shaped salad dish, arrange round it a border of endive, and pour the mayonnaise mixture in the center. Cut some celery into pieces of various lengths, and arrange in fancy shaped groups against the endive. Garnish round all with croutons of aspic jelly. Place the shells of the lobsters on the top lengthwise, head to head, put across their backs some rounds of cucumber overlapping each other, and serve.
Three separate treatments under one heading: a cold diced salad in lettuce cups, a hot dressed lobster served instantly, and a composed platter built inside the emptied shells. Only the second is timed, and its timing is the thing most in need of correction.
- Boiling timeTwenty minutes will overcook a medium lobster into cotton. A 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb hard-shell lobster needs roughly 8-10 minutes in heavily salted boiling water, 12 at the outside for a 2 lb bird; the shell turns red well before the meat is done, so it is a poor gauge. Pull it while the tail still has spring and cool it quickly.
- Old spoon measuresA saltspoonful is about 1/4 teaspoon, so the quarter-saltspoon of pepper is a scant pinch. A mustard spoon is a small condiment spoon; sizes varied, but reckon somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 teaspoon. "Made mustard" is prepared mustard from the jar, not dry powder.
- Coral and green fatThe coral is the roe of a female lobster, which firms and reddens on cooking; the green fat is the tomalley, or liver. The recipe says to save both along with the flesh, though it never states where they go. Current advice is to eat tomalley sparingly, since it concentrates contaminants from the water.
- Opening the shellThe can-opener of the period was typically a hooked lever blade, useful as a shell hook. Kitchen shears down the underside of the tail and the back of the claws does the same job with less damage, which matters in version (3) where the shells become the centerpiece.
- What to discardThe "dead men" are the feathery gills along the body cavity, the sac behind the eyes is the stomach, and the dark line in the tail is the intestinal tract. All three come out easily and none of them is edible.
- The hot versionVersion (2) is a warm salad, and the instruction to stir the lobster only until hot is the hinge. Butter and vinegar over direct heat will break and the meat will toughen if it goes beyond warm; work over moderate heat, thirty to sixty seconds, and have the lettuce and eggs already plated.
- Aspic croutonsThe garnish in version (3) is firm savory jelly cut into small cubes or diamonds. Set a well-flavored fish or chicken stock with gelatin in a shallow pan, chill until sliceable, and cut cold.
- YieldNothing is stated. Version (1) from one medium lobster serves two as a first course; version (3), using two lobsters and a full platter of endive, celery and cucumber, serves four to six.
- Dressing quantity"One-half of the mayonnaise dressing" refers back to a dressing recipe elsewhere in the book. Reckon on about 1/2 cup of mayonnaise per pound of picked meat, half mixed in and half spooned over.
The page is often associated with Oscar Tschirky and the Waldorf's dining rooms, and it belongs to the long period in which lobster was moving from cheap coastal protein to luxury restaurant fare. The entry shows the change plainly: the meat is bought live, cooked to order, and then framed with endive, celery, cucumber and aspic in the elaborate garde-manger style that Escoffier's generation would codify. The three numbered versions are typical of the book's method, which collects the kitchen's working variants rather than settling on one, and the reuse of washed shells as serving vessels is pure hotel practice. The insistence that the hot version be eaten at once is the honest note here.