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Dressed Head Lettuce (Select a large firm head)
Select a large, firm head of lettuce. Remove all wilted leaves. Separate the heart leaves sufficiently to wash them thoroughly. Drain, arrange leaves on shallow serving plate, keeping them in their original shape if possible. Sprinkle over all finely shredded red and green prepared peppers. (To prepare peppers, plunge them into boiling water, then quickly rub off the glazed outer skin, drop peppers into cold water until crisp. Cut a slice from the stem ends, remove seeds and veins, then cut in thread like rings.) Serve with French Dressing, to which add one tablespoon Roquefort cheese. Blend well before pouring over Salad.
A whole-head salad meant to be carried to the table looking like a lettuce rather than a bowl of leaves. Nothing here is difficult, but two details in the original will confuse a modern cook: what "prepared peppers" means, and what French dressing meant in 1913.
- The lettuce"A large, firm head" means iceberg or a tight butterhead, not romaine or loose leaf. Cut out the core, run cold water into the cavity to loosen the leaves from the inside, then invert to drain; this washes the heart without destroying the shape the recipe asks you to preserve.
- "Prepared peppers"Not a jarred product. It means sweet bell peppers blanched and skinned, and the recipe tells you how: a brief plunge in boiling water loosens the tough outer skin, which then rubs away under your thumb. Thirty to sixty seconds is enough; longer and the flesh softens and will not cut into clean rings.
- Ice water mattersCold water matters -- The cold-water bath after blanching is not optional garnish-craft. It stops the cooking and firms the pepper walls so the "thread like rings" hold their shape instead of slumping on the plate.
- French dressing of the periodAt this date the name generally meant oil and vinegar with salt and pepper, shaken or whisked, often around three parts oil to one of vinegar, though period versions vary and many add paprika or mustard. Follow the book's own French Dressing if you can. It is not the sweet orange bottled dressing that later took the name. Use a mild vinegar or lemon and a good olive or neutral oil.
- The RoquefortOne tablespoon of Roquefort to a dressing for one head is a seasoning, not a cheese dressing. Mash it into the vinegar and salt first so it disperses, then beat in the oil; added to finished dressing it stays in lumps.
- Dress at the tablePour the dressing only as the salad goes out. Leaves arranged in their "original shape" collapse within minutes of being oiled, and the whole point of the dish is the intact head.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; one large head dressed this way will serve roughly four as a side salad.
Whole-head and quartered lettuce salads were a fixture of American tables from the 1890s well into the mid-twentieth century, and the wedge salad still served in steakhouses is a recognizable descendant. The blanched, skinned sweet pepper cut into rings appears often as a garnish in cookbooks of the same period, valued for its color. Roquefort stirred into oil-and-vinegar dressing anticipates what would later be bottled as blue cheese dressing. 52 Sunday Dinners was organized as a year of complete menus.