Lobster Salad

Ingredients

• A lobster
• a couple of anchovies
• a tea-spoonful of capers
• six olives
• a little piece of bright-green parsley
• two fresh eggs
• a little pepper
• a little salt
• some oil
• some vinegar

Method

1. 1

   Boil an egg for twenty minutes, then cool it.

2. 2

   Prepare anchovies by removing the bone and washing them.

3. 3

   Drain capers and stone the olives.

4. 4

   Chop parsley.

5. 5

   Place lettuce in a dish, add lobster meat cut into small pieces, and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

6. 6

   For the mayonnaise, separate egg yolk from white, beat yolk, and slowly add oil while mixing until thick.

7. 7

   Add vinegar cautiously.

8. 8

   Spread sauce over lobster and garnish with capers and parsley.

Nutrition per serving

As published

This recipe was extracted from Practical home cookery (1906) by A. G. Payne, page 23. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

lobster salad. Just in the same way the most beautiful clear jelly might be handed round in white pudding-basins, or even in the saucepan in which it was boiled ; but how different from a handsome mould, with a few pre- served fruits inside it, placed in the centre of a bright cut-glass dish, and a little cut lemon by way of garnish ! But we have been long enough on the subject, “ How not to do it,” and must begin at once. First the ingredients : — A lobster ; and if there is any coral in it, take it out, and make some lobster butter with it, as it will do no good to the salad. This lobster butter will keep, and enable you at a future period to make lobster sauce in a hurry out of a preserved tin of lobster ; and this cannot be done without lobster butter. Next, some fresh lettuces (French are by far the best for mayonnaise salads), two fresh eggs — as we are only going to describe how to make enough for about four persons — some oil, and a little parsley. We will also suppose the house to contain some vinegar, a bottle of capers, a bottle of anchovies, and a bottle of olives, at the same time reminding timid housekeepers that these latter will do over and over again, and that probably a shilhng bottle of each will last a twelvemonth. We will now describe how a cook ought to proceed in order to make a good lobster salad. The first thing she would do would be to put an egg in a saucepan, and boil it for twenty minutes or so, and then place it in cold water to get cold. Next, take a couple of anchovies out of the bottle, and put them on a plate (putting the bottle back in the cup- board ; for if you get in the habit of putting each thing by in its place as you use it, you will never get into a muddle). Next, take a small penknife, and cut the anchovy open longways, and carefully remove TO MAKE DISHES LOOK NICE. 49 the bone ; if this is done properly, each anchovy will make four fillets or thin strips varying from two to three inches ; wash them thoroughly in cold water, to remove all the salt and soft part. Dry them, and roll them up, as they look at times too much like worms if not rolled. Next, take a tea-spoonful of capers, and drain them carefully on a cloth, in order to thoroughly remove the vinegar in which they have been preserved. Next, take six olives, and stone them. This is done by cutting a strip off them as thick as you can, keep- ing the edge of the knife scraping the stone the whole time. As a rule, the olive will look round after the stone is taken out, but of course they have no ends to them. A little practice will enable the cook to cut out the stone quite bare, leaving the flesh, so to speak, of the olive in one piece, which curls up again, and looks like an olive that had never been touched. These directions may to some seem unnecessarily minute ; but then we are writing for others who per- haps have never seen an olive except in a bottle in the grocer’s window, and then they thought them preserved plums. Next, chop up not too finely a little piece of bright- green parsley ; enough to cover a threepenny-piece when chopped is quite sufficient. Put all these things by on a clean dry plate for use — viz. the hard-boiled egg, cold, with the shell on ; the anchovies, rolled up ; the capers, dry ; the olives, stoned ; the parsley, chopped. And, as we have said, clear away what you have used before beginning any- thing fresh. Next, wipe, or quickly wash in cold water and wipe, the lettuces, and pile them up lightly in a silver or any oval-shaped dish. Next, remove all the meat from the lobster, not forgetting the soft part inside and the claws ; cut it all up into small pieces not much bigger than dice, and spread the meat over D 50 PRACTICAL HOME COOKERY. the top of the lettuce in the dish, taking care as much as possible to make the shape high in the centre. A sort of oval pyramid may convey the idea, though it is not a very mathematical expression. Sprinkle a little pepper

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.