(To serve with Lamb-cutlets, Veal cutlets, or Roast Lamb.)
This, though a very agreeable and refreshing salad, is not to be recommended when there is the slightest tendency to disorder of the system; for the powerful acid of the uncooked sorrel might in that case produce serious consequences.[[63]]
[63]. It should be especially avoided when dysentery, or other diseases of a similar nature, are prevalent. We mention this, because if more general precaution were observed with regard to diet, great suffering would, in many instances, be avoided.
Take from the stems some very young tender sorrel, wash it delicately clean, drain it well, and shake it dry in a salad-basket, or in a soft cloth held by the four corners; arrange it lightly in the bowl, and at the instant of serving, sauce it simply with the preceding French dressing of oil with a small portion of vinegar, or with a Mayonnaise mixed with chili instead of a milder vinegar. The sorrel may be divided with the fingers and mingled with an equal proportion of very tender lettuces; and, when it is not objected to,[[64]] mixed tarragon may be strewed thickly upon them. To some tastes a small quantity of green onions or of eschalots would be more agreeable.
[64]. The peculiar flavour of this fine aromatic herb is less generally relished in England than in many other countries; but when it is not disliked it may be used with great advantage in our cookery: it is easily cultivated, and quite deserves a nook in every kitchen-garden.
LOBSTER SALAD.
First, prepare a sauce with the coral of a hen lobster, pounded and rubbed through a sieve, and very gradually mixed with a good mayonnaise, remoulade, or English salad-dressing of the present chapter. Next, half fill the bowl or more with small salad herbs, or with young lettuces finely shred, and arrange upon them spirally, or in a chain, alternate slices of the flesh of a large lobster, or of two middling-sized ones, and some hard-boiled eggs cut thin and evenly. Leave a space in the centre, pour in the sauce, heap lightly some small salad on the top, and send the dish immediately to table. The coral of a second lobster may be intermingled with the white flesh of the fish with very good effect; and the forced eggs of page [137] may be placed at intervals round the edge of the bowl as a decoration, and an excellent accompaniment as well. Another mode of making the salad is to lay the split bodies of the fish round the bowl, and the claws, freed carefully from the shells, arranged high in the centre on the herbs; the soft part of the bodies may be mixed with the sauce when it is liked; but the colour will not then be good.
Obs.—The addition of cucumber in ribbons (see Author’s Receipt, Chapter [XVII].), laid lightly round it, is always an agreeable one to lobster salad: they may previously be sauced, and then drained from their dressing a little.
A more wholesome and safer mode of imparting the flavour of the cucumber, however, is to use for the salad vinegar in which that vegetable has been steeped for some hours after having been cut up small.