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Dressed Head Lettuce (Remove the outer green leaves)
Remove the outer green leaves from two medium-sized heads of crisp head lettuce. Wash carefully, without separating the leaves; drain dry in a wire basket or on towels. Cut heads in halves lengthwise and arrange in salad bowl. Set aside in a cool place, and, just before serving, pour over French Dressing. Serve at once.
A wedge salad in all but name, and the technique is sound: the head stays intact until it reaches the bowl. Two things matter — the lettuce must be genuinely dry, and the dressing goes on at the table.
- What "head lettuce" meantA crisphead type: iceberg or one of the older firm-heading varieties, or a firm butterhead. Two medium heads halved lengthwise gives four servings; romaine hearts work if you want something with more flavor, but a loose leaf lettuce will collapse under the dressing.
- Halves, not quartersA half-head is a generous portion by modern standards. Quartering gives eight wedges that are easier to eat with a fork and expose more cut surface to the dressing.
- Drying is the hingeWater clinging in the leaves dilutes the dressing and keeps it from adhering — the salad goes watery in minutes. A salad spinner does in seconds what the wire basket did by swinging; then rest the halves cut side down on a towel.
- Chilling"A cool place" would have meant a cellar or an icebox shelf. Half an hour in the refrigerator, loosely covered, firms up the leaves; longer than a few hours and the cut edges brown.
- Dress at the last moment"Serve at once" is not politeness. Vinaigrette begins wilting cut lettuce almost immediately, so pour in the kitchen doorway or bring the dressing to the table.
- The French Dressing referencedFrench dressing of this period was typically around three parts oil to one part vinegar with salt and pepper, whisked or shaken to a temporary emulsion; some versions of the era also included mustard or paprika.
Dressed head lettuce belongs to the moment when crisphead lettuce became a year-round American commodity. Refrigerated rail cars, packed with ice, moved firm heads out of California and other winter growing regions to eastern cities, though winter lettuce in this period still came substantially from greenhouses, hotbeds and southern growers, and the large-scale transcontinental iceberg trade came later. The heads were shipped intact and cheap, and cooks treated them accordingly: split, chilled, and dressed, with none of the tearing and tossing that the loose garden lettuces of summer required. "French dressing" in American cookbooks of this era simply meant oil and vinegar seasoned with salt and pepper, the name usually explained as the plain continental practice as opposed to the boiled or mayonnaise-based dressings then common in English and American kitchens; the sweet orange bottled product that later took the name is a distant relative, descending from tomato-sweetened variants of the same oil-and-vinegar formula.