Egg Salad
Put six eggs into a saucepan, cover them with cold water, heat slowly and boil for forty-five minutes; when cold, shell them, remove the whites from two and chop fine with a silver knife, cut the remaining eggs into quarters, arrange on lettuce leaves and sprinkle with a French dressing, sprinkle over them the chopped whites and rub the reserved yolks through a fine sieve, letting the yellow shreds fall over the top. Garnish with diced boiled beet and chopped parsley.
A composed egg salad of the mimosa type, where sieved yolk is scattered over the top as a garnish rather than mixed in. Almost nothing here needs changing except the cooking time.
- The forty-five minute boilIgnore it. Cover the eggs with cold water, bring to a bare simmer, and hold them there 10 to 12 minutes, then cool in cold water. Three-quarters of an hour at a boil gives rubbery whites, a chalky yolk and a grey-green ring at the yolk's edge, all of which spoil the clean yellow shreds the recipe is after.
- Why a silver knifeCarbon-steel blades of the period discoloured egg white and darkened cut fruit. Stainless steel does the job now; the instruction is a relic, not a flavour matter.
- French dressingAt this period this means plain oil-and-vinegar seasoned with salt and pepper, in the region of two to three parts oil to one of vinegar. It is not the sweet bottled dressing sold under that name in America today.
- "Sprinkle" the dressingDress the lettuce and the egg quarters lightly and separately, before the garnishes go on. Once the sieved yolk is scattered, any further dressing turns it to paste.
- Sieving the yolkYolks push through a fine mesh most cleanly when fully cold and slightly dry. Press with the back of a spoon and let the shreds fall directly onto the plate rather than lifting them, which compacts them.
- The beetBoiled and diced beet is used for colour against the yellow and green. Drain it well and add at the last moment, or it bleeds pink across the whole plate.
- YieldSix eggs make four modest first-course salads, or two as a light lunch.
Egg salads of this kind belong to the late-Victorian and Edwardian taste for composed salads built on a bed of lettuce and finished with contrasting garnishes rather than tossed together. The sieved-yolk topping is the treatment French cookery calls mimosa, said to be named for the flower's yellow puffs, and similar garnishes appear in English and American books of the period on eggs and vegetables. The insistence on a silver knife fits the era: carbon-steel blades reacted with acidic and sulphurous foods, and cookbooks of the period repeat the warning. The reason for so long a boiling time is not explained in the recipe itself; some writers of the day did argue that eggs required long cooking to be digestible.