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Asparagus and Shrimp Salad
(Germany.) Boil 27 asparagus tips, cut into short pieces, without ends that are hard; add an equal amount of cooked and sliced shrimps. Mix these well with a mayonnaise dressing, using capers, French mustard, and a border of lettuce leaves. Serve with cheese and crackers.
A short, loosely written salad of the kind that filled turn-of-the-century "foreign" chapters. The instructions assume you already know how to make mayonnaise and how to cook shrimp, so most of the work is in reading between the lines.
- That count of 27The number is oddly precise, and the recipe gives no reason for it. Roughly a pound of asparagus and a pound of peeled cooked shrimp will give the equal balance the recipe asks for.
- Cook the asparagus short"Boil" here means 2-4 minutes in well-salted water, until a knife just enters the thickest part. Longer and the tips collapse into the dressing. Shock in ice water and drain thoroughly, or the salad will weep.
- Snap, don't guess"Without ends that are hard" is the whole trimming instruction. Bend each spear until it breaks on its own, or peel the lower third of thick spears.
- ShrimpSmall cooked shrimp, possibly the tiny brown North Sea shrimp, would suit a German attribution; the recipe says only "cooked and sliced." Small or medium shrimp, poached until just opaque, are the right texture; "sliced" means split lengthwise or cut in half crosswise, not minced.
- French mustardA smooth, mild Dijon-style mustard, not the sharp English powder. A teaspoon or so in a cup of mayonnaise, with a tablespoon of capers, rinsed if they are packed in salt.
- MayonnaiseThe original assumes a hand-made mayonnaise with raw yolk. Jarred mayonnaise, thinned with a little lemon juice, behaves the same way here and avoids the raw-egg question in an uncooked dish.
- Dress lateMix no more than half an hour before serving. Asparagus and capers both release liquid that breaks the dressing, and acid dulls the green.
- ServingThe lettuce is a border, not a bed: line the platter or individual plates with whole leaves and mound the salad inside. The recipe adds only that it is served with cheese and crackers.
With a Saucepan Over the Sea belongs to a genre popular around 1900, in which an American or English cook toured Europe and brought back dishes labelled by country rather than by region or source. The German attribution is plausible: asparagus, Spargel, is a national preoccupation there, with a short spring season and a strong preference for the thick blanched white spears, and cold asparagus with a mayonnaise-based sauce was a familiar dish. The shrimp may have been the small brown Nordseekrabben of the North Sea coast, which were sold already boiled. What dates the recipe most is its shape rather than its contents: the terse assumption that any cook can produce mayonnaise unprompted, and the French mustard and capers marking it as a genteel dish.