Lobster Salad—without Oil.
1 fine lobster—boiled thoroughly, and carefully picked out. Cut into small pieces; put in a broad dish, and sprinkle with a teaspoonful of salt and one of pepper. Set aside in a cold place.
2 bunches of white crisp celery, also cut into small pieces. Toss up lightly with the lobster.
Dressing.
2 large table-spoonfuls of butter.
1½ large table-spoonfuls of flour or corn-starch.
1 pint boiling water.
Stir the flour, previously wet, into the boiling water; let it boil two minutes and add the butter. Boil one minute longer and set aside to cool. Meantime, mix well and smoothly.
1 large table-spoonful of mustard.
1 teaspoonful of sugar—(powdered).
½ teaspoonful of salt.
1 table-spoonful boiling water.
1 small cup of vinegar.
Beat this up well, then add to the drawn butter—beat to a cream and pour over the lobster.
Garnish the dish with celery tops and hard-boiled eggs.
It gives me great pleasure to present this receipt to those who, from prejudice or taste, do not like the presence of salad oil in any dish. I have known many who would not knowingly partake of salad, fricassee, or ragoût, that had oil, in however small quantity, as one of its ingredients. And, unlike mince-pie, with the brandy left out, or pie-crust, minus shortening, this oil-less salad is really delicious. Especially if a couple of raw eggs, well whipped, be added to the drawn butter, when almost cold.
Chicken Salad. (Excellent.)
2 full-grown chickens, boiled tender, and cold.
3 bunches of celery.
2 cups boiling water.
2 table-spoonfuls corn-starch, wet with cold water.
1 great spoonful fat, skimmed from liquor in which the fowls were boiled.
2 table-spoonfuls oil.
2 teaspoonfuls made mustard.
3 raw eggs, whipped light.
3 hard-boiled eggs.
1 table-spoonful powdered sugar.
1 teaspoonful salt, or to taste.
1 teaspoonful pepper.
1 teaspoonful Worcestershire sauce.
Remove from the chicken every bit of fat and skin. Cut the best portions of the meat into dice with a sharp knife. Chopping is apt to make it ragged and uneven in appearance. Cut the celery in like manner, and set both aside in a cool place, when you have strewed a little salt over the chicken. To the boiling water add the corn-starch, and boil fast until it thickens well. Then stir in the chicken-essence, skimmed from the top of the cold liquor in which the fowls were boiled. If the pot is clean, it will be of a fine golden color. Take from the fire, and begin to whip into the sauce the beaten eggs. Continue this until the mixture is nearly cold. Rub the hard-boiled yolks to a fine powder in a Wedgewood mortar or earthenware bowl; add the mustard, sugar, pepper, and salt; the Worcestershire sauce; then, a few drops at a time, the oil, lastly, also gradually, the vinegar. Strain through a wire sieve, or coarse tartelane, rubbing through all that will pass the net. Put the chicken and celery together in a glass salad-dish, and wet up with half of the vinegar mixture. Be careful not to do more than moisten it well, tossing up lightly with a silver fork. Then beat the rest of the vinegar sauce into the thicker mixture, which should by this time be perfectly cold. Pour over the salad; ornament the centre of the dish with flower-cups made of the hollowed halves of the whites of boiled eggs, with celery-tufts for petals. Lay a chain of sliced whites nearer the edge of the bowl, with a tender-celery leaf in each link, and set in a very cold place until wanted.
In obedience to this last injunction, I once left my salad on the shelf of a “very cold” pantry, until it was slightly frozen all through—a misadventure I did not suspect until it came to table. With a desperate attempt at facetiousness, I introduced the compound as a novelty—“a salade glacée”—and, to my relief and surprise, found in the accident a parallel to the “Irish blackguard” snuff story. The spoiled dish was pronounced by all far more delightful than the usual form of salad. I do not advise a repetition of the adventure on the part of any of my readers. Perhaps other guests might be less complaisant and flattering. It is hardly worth while to risk a cut glass dish on the chances of success.
Use the liquor in which the chickens were boiled for soup.