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Chicken Salad (One cabbage chopped very fine)
One cabbage, chopped very fine.
Two eggs.
Half pint vinegar.
One teaspoonful mustard.
Half teaspoonful pepper.
Two tablespoonfuls sugar.
One tablespoonful butter.
Juice of one lemon.
Stir salt, pepper, sugar, eggs, mustard and butter together; pour into boiling vinegar, After having minced the nice parts of the fowl, add the chopped cabbage. Then pour dressing over the whole. Dress the top with whites and yolks of hard-boiled eggs.
This is a chicken salad built on a cooked boiled dressing rather than mayonnaise, and the dressing is where the whole thing succeeds or fails. Read the method before you start: the ingredient list omits salt, which the instructions then call for.
- Half pint vinegarOne cup. Vinegar strength varied a good deal in this period, so taste as you go; if a modern 5% cider vinegar seems harsh, cut it with a tablespoon or two of water.
- The hinge: do not scramble the eggsPouring beaten eggs straight into boiling vinegar as written will curdle them. Whisk a little of the hot vinegar into the egg mixture first, return everything to the pan, and cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until it coats a spoon — around 170F. It should thicken, never boil.
- SaltCalled for in the method but absent from the list. Start with half a teaspoon and correct after the dressing has cooled, since cold dressing tastes flatter than warm.
- "The nice parts of the fowl"A fowl was a mature stewing hen, simmered until tender; the breast and thigh meat were picked out for salad and the rest went to soup. Roughly 3 cups of diced cooked chicken, from a 4–5 lb bird or from poached thighs and breasts.
- The cabbageA firm green head, shredded as finely as you can manage — the fineness is what lets it read as a salad rather than slaw. One medium head gives about 8 cups, which is a great deal of cabbage against 3 cups of chicken; halve it if you want the bird to lead.
- Dressing warm, serving coldPour the dressing on while it is still warm so the cabbage softens slightly and absorbs it, then chill at least two hours. Butter in the dressing will firm up in the refrigerator, which is normal.
- GarnishHard-boiled eggs, whites chopped and yolks sieved, arranged separately over the top for contrast. Two eggs beyond those in the dressing are enough.
- YieldOn the quantities estimated above, roughly eight as a supper dish, more as one of several salads on a buffet table.
Before jarred mayonnaise, boiled or cooked dressings of just this kind — eggs, vinegar, mustard, sugar and a knob of butter, thickened over heat — were common in American households. Such dressings are often said to have kept better than an oil emulsion in an unrefrigerated pantry and to have cost less, and they suited the sweet-sour palate that also produced boiled slaw and hot bacon dressings. The cabbage here looks to be doing frugal work: chicken salad was a prestige dish for church suppers, luncheons and wedding receptions, and stretching the picked meat of one stewing hen with a shredded head of cabbage would have let a hostess serve it to a crowd. The word "fowl" is worth noticing too — it meant a mature bird, tough enough to need long simmering but far more flavorful in the pot than a young broiler, which is why so many turn-of-the-century salads assume you have a cold boiled bird already on hand.