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Lobster Salad (Cut lobster meat into small)
Cut lobster meat into small dice; cover with oil and lemon juice; let it stand several hours; drain off the oil and juice, and add two-thirds as much celery; mix lobster and celery together, then add the thick mayonnaise dressing; mix well. Make nests or cups of crisp head lettuce leaves; put a large spoonful of the lobster in each cup, with a tablespoonful of the dressing on top. Garnish with a few capers and pounded coral sprinkled over the dressing.
A late-Victorian composed salad that assumes you already have cooked lobster and a stiff homemade mayonnaise on hand. The instructions are complete once you supply the quantities the original omits.
- The hinge: drain the marinade completelyThe oil-and-lemon soak seasons the meat, but any liquid left clinging will slacken the mayonnaise into a soup. Drain in a sieve, then blot the dice dry before dressing.
- Marinate cold, not on the counter"Let it stand several hours" was written for a cool larder. Cover and refrigerate; cooked lobster held at room temperature for hours is the one real risk in this dish.
- Quantities, since none are givenFigure on the meat of two 1 1/4-1 1/2 lb lobsters, roughly 12 oz picked, with celery in proportion; the original's "two-thirds as much" does not say whether it means weight or volume, so judge by eye. Enough for about six lettuce cups.
- CoralThe coral is the roe, found only in hen lobsters, dark greenish-black when raw and coral-red once cooked. Dry the cooked roe briefly in a low oven, then crush it to powder with the back of a spoon. If your lobsters have none, paprika or sieved hard-boiled yolk gives the same speckled finish.
- Thick mayonnaiseThe book means a hand-whisked mayonnaise, stiff enough to hold a peak, not a pourable dressing. A commercial jarred mayonnaise works; thin bottled "salad dressing" will not hold on top of the lobster as the recipe expects.
- Raw eggIf you make the mayonnaise from scratch, it is never cooked. Use pasteurised eggs when serving anyone pregnant, elderly or immune-compromised.
- Head lettuce"Head lettuce" then meant any cabbage-heading lettuce, not specifically iceberg; a modern crisphead does the job well, giving cup-shaped leaves that stay crisp. Chill the leaves in ice water and dry them so the dressing does not slide.
- CapersCapers of the period were packed in vinegar or brine and could be sharper than some modern jarred ones. Rinse and drain them, then scatter at the last moment.
Lobster salad appears in many American cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s. The construction is typical of late-Victorian salad practice: a firm protein cut into neat dice, crisp celery for bulk and crunch, and everything bound in mayonnaise and served in a lettuce leaf. Celery was a fashionable salad vegetable of the period, sold in tall glass vases at table. The pounded coral garnish assumes a cook who bought whole lobsters, boiled and picked them, and treated every part including the roe as usable -- a habit that faded once picked meat could be bought by the pound.