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Lobster Salad, Taft
Boil two live lobsters of two pounds each in a gallon of boiling water with a tablespoon salt twenty minutes. Take them up, and let thoroughly cool off. Crack the shells from the tails and claws and carefully pick out all the meat from them, then cut in even, small square pieces and place in a salad bowl. Add three cold, hard-boiled eggs cut same as the lobster. Finely chop two small, sound, peeled shallots, half a seeded, finely chopped, sound green pepper, and add to the lobster.
Cut a stalk of well-pared white celery in small square pieces and place with the rest, add also half teaspoon finely chopped parsley and half teaspoon of finely chopped chives. Season with four tablespoons dressing and gently but thoroughly mix. Then spread a mayonnaise sauce over, and just a second before serving briskly mix in the mayonnaise and serve.
A composed lobster salad of the Delmonico school, where the dressing is added in two stages. The only figure that needs real correction is the boiling time.
- Cut the boil in halfShorten the boil -- Twenty minutes will overcook a two-pound lobster. Around fifteen minutes in hard-boiling salted water is usually enough for that size; the tail meat should be opaque and firm but still springy.
- Cool it properly"Let thoroughly cool off" means cooled before picking, not merely warm. An ice-water plunge stops the carryover cooking and makes the meat release cleanly from the shell.
- "Dressing" herePlain "dressing" is evidently an oil-and-vinegar French dressing rather than mayonnaise — the mayonnaise arrives separately at the end. Something on the order of three parts oil to one of vinegar, salted and peppered.
- The two-stage sauceThe vinaigrette is folded through the lobster first; the mayonnaise goes on top as a blanket and is only mixed in immediately before serving. Mixing everything at once loses the point of the method.
- Mayonnaise and raw eggPeriod mayonnaise was generally made by hand with raw yolk. Commercial jarred mayonnaise uses pasteurised egg; if you make your own, use pasteurised eggs and keep the salad refrigerated, since dressed shellfish is a poor thing to leave standing.
- "Sound" produceFilippini's repeated "sound" simply means unblemished and unbruised — a real concern before refrigerated distribution. Shallots are still shallots; if the ones you have are large, one is plenty for two.
- Celery"Well-pared white celery" is the pale inner heart, strings removed. Modern celery is greener and stringier than the blanched Victorian article, so peel the outer ribs or use only the heart.
- YieldTwo two-pound lobsters give roughly a pound of picked meat, which with the eggs and vegetables serves four generously as a main course or six as a first course.
The recipe comes from Alexander Filippini, long a chef at Delmonico's in New York, whose books carry dozens of dishes named for the customers and public figures of his day — the same commercial habit to which Lobster Newburg and Chicken à la Keene are traditionally, if contestedly, traced. The Taft here is generally taken to be William Howard Taft, president from 1909 to 1913 and a man whose appetite was a standing subject of newspaper comment; attaching his name to a rich lobster salad was flattery aimed at diners rather than a record of anything he personally ordered. What the recipe does document precisely is the American restaurant style of the period: lobster boiled and picked in-house, cut in scrupulous small dice, bound with a light vinaigrette, then masked with mayonnaise that is broken into the salad only at the moment of service so the dish reaches the table looking white and untouched.