Lobster Salad. ✠

Pick out every bit of the meat from the body and claws of a cold boiled lobster. Lay aside the coral for the dressing, and mince the rest. For the dressing you will need—

Rub the yolks to a smooth paste in a mortar or bowl, with a Wedgewood pestle, a silver or wooden spoon, until perfectly free from lumps. Add gradually, rubbing all the while, the other ingredients, the coral last. This should have been worked well upon a plate with a silver knife or wooden spatula. Proceed slowly and carefully in the work of amalgamating the various ingredients, moistening with vinegar as they stiffen. Increase the quantity of this as the mixture grows smooth, until it is thin enough to pour over the minced lobster. You will need a teacupful at least. Toss with a silver fork and do not break the meat. Some mix chopped lettuce with the salad; but unless it is to be eaten within a few minutes, the vinegar will wither the tender leaves. The better plan is to heap a glass dish with the inner leaves of several lettuce-heads, laying pounded ice among them, and pass with the lobster, that the guests may add the green salad to their taste.

When lettuce is out of season, the following dressing, the receipt for which was given me by a French gourmand, may be used.

Prepare the egg and coral as above, with the condiments there mentioned, but mix with the lobster-meat four tablespoonfuls of fine white cabbage, chopped small, with two small onions, also minced into almost invisible bits, a teaspoonful of anchovy or other sauce, and a tablespoonful of celery vinegar.

All lobster salad should be eaten as soon as possible after the dressing is added, else it becomes unwholesome. If you use canned lobster, open and turn out the contents of the can into a china dish several hours before you mix the dressing, that the close, airless smell may pass away.

Garnish the edges of the dish with cool white leaves of curled lettuce, or with a chain of rings made of the whites of the boiled eggs.