Cut 1 pound of cooked veal in very small pieces; add 1 herring that has been soaked in milk, 3 cooked potatoes, 2 pickles, 3 boiled beets, 3 apples, 2 stalks of celery, 1 cooked carrot. Pour over a mayonnaise dressing and garnish with sliced hard-boiled eggs, olives and capers.
December 23 — No. 23
Italian
A composed cold salad of the type that filled the cold-supper and buffet chapters of turn-of-the-century books. The original gives no dressing quantity, no seasoning and no yield, so the notes below fill in what a cook needs.
- The herring is salt herringA single "herring" here means a whole salt-cured fish, which is why it is soaked in milk — the soak draws out salt and softens the flesh. Reckon on several hours in the refrigerator, milk changed once; a modern matjes or schmaltz herring fillet in brine needs far less, perhaps an hour. Pickled herring in vinegar is a different thing and will sharpen the salad considerably.
- Cut everything the same sizeThe instruction that decides whether this works is the very first one: very small pieces. Veal, potato, beet, apple, pickle, celery and carrot should all be diced to about a quarter inch so no single element dominates a spoonful. The herring is best minced finer still, so it seasons rather than announces itself.
- Keep the beets separate until the endThree boiled beets will dye the whole bowl magenta within minutes of meeting the mayonnaise. Dress the other ingredients first and fold the beets in last, just before serving, if you want the components to stay distinct.
- Dressing quantity"A mayonnaise dressing" is left to judgment. About a cup to a cup and a quarter coats this volume without drowning it; the salad should look bound, not soupy. Thinning the mayonnaise with a spoonful of the pickle brine or a little cream makes it easier to fold through without mashing the potato.
- Seasoning is assumed, not statedNothing is said about salt, pepper or acid; the herring and pickles may have been thought to supply enough. Taste before you dress and again after: the potato and veal will want salt and pepper, and a squeeze of lemon lifts the whole thing.
- Cooked vealThe recipe calls only for veal already cooked, which in a kitchen of this period would often have meant meat left from an earlier meal. Poached or roasted veal shoulder works; so does a cooked pork loin or chicken if veal is inconvenient or expensive, though the flavour becomes less delicate.
- The applesThree apples to one pound of meat is a lot of fruit. Use a firm tart variety and toss the dice in lemon juice as you cut, or they will brown while you assemble the rest.
- Yield and servingThis makes enough for six to eight as a first course or light supper. Chill at least two hours so the flavours settle, mound it on a platter, then apply the egg, olive and caper garnish — the eggs go on at the last moment, as sliced yolk dries out quickly.
Salads of this kind — diced cooked meat, root vegetables, pickles and apple bound with mayonnaise — travelled across nineteenth-century Europe under a confusing set of national labels. What one cookbook calls Italian salad another calls Russian salad, salade russe or, in Italian, insalata russa; the names seem to have attached less to origin than to fashion. The salted herring points toward northern and central European practice rather than anything Italian, and books like this one, arranged as a dish a day from a different country, were rarely strict about provenance. What the recipe does document reliably is the economy of the period kitchen: a pound of cooked veal left from an earlier meal, three boiled potatoes, a carrot, and mayonnaise turned into a dish presentable enough to garnish with olives and capers.