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Lima Bean Salad
2 cups or 1 can lima beans.
Cream Dressing. 2 hard-cooked eggs. 1 tablespoon finely chopped chives.
PROCESS: Cook beans in boiling salted water until tender; drain. If canned French lima beans are used, drain from liquor in can and rinse in cold water. Cover beans with French Dressing, let stand one hour. Drain and sprinkle with chives (onion juice may be used). Mix with Cream Dressing and arrange in nests of lettuce heart leaves. Garnish with eggs cut in quarters lengthwise; dip sharp edge in French Dressing, then in finely chopped chives or parsley.
A marinated bean salad of the sort that filled the cold-dish slot on a Sunday menu. Almost everything that needs decoding is in the two dressings the recipe assumes you already have.
- French DressingIn this period that usually means a plain vinaigrette: roughly three parts oil to one part vinegar, salt, pepper, whisked or shaken to combine. Some versions of the era also carry a little mustard or paprika. It is not the sweet orange bottled dressing sold under that name today.
- Cream DressingA separate standing recipe in books of this era, usually a cooked dressing thickened with egg and flour and finished with cream, or sometimes just sweetened whipped or sour cream sharpened with vinegar. Mayonnaise thinned with a couple of tablespoons of cream gives the same effect with less work.
- The hinge: marinate, then drainThe hour in French dressing is what makes the salad taste of something; limas are bland and absorb slowly. Draining thoroughly before the cream dressing goes on is equally important, or the finished salad turns thin and separates on the plate.
- "French lima beans" in a canThis appears to mean the small flat baby limas rather than the large starchy Fordhook type. Canned baby limas or thawed frozen baby limas both work; the rinse the recipe calls for removes the canning liquid and is worth doing.
- Cooking fresh or dried beansShelled fresh baby limas need about 20 minutes in salted water; large limas closer to 30. Dried limas want soaking and 45 to 60 minutes, and you will need about 1 cup dried to reach 2 cups cooked.
- Onion juiceThe stated substitute for chives. It is made by grating an onion and pressing out the liquid; a quarter teaspoon is assertive, so add it to the dressing rather than over the beans.
- Egg garnishDipping the cut edge of each quarter in dressing and then in chopped chives or parsley is purely decorative and does not keep. Assemble it within an hour of serving.
- YieldTwo cups of beans dressed and mounded in lettuce cups serves four as a salad course, or two as a light lunch.
Lima beans reached American tables from South America by way of the Caribbean trade, and the small flat "French" or baby type was a canning staple by the late nineteenth century, which is why the recipe offers a can as an equal alternative to fresh beans. The construction here is pure turn-of-the-century salad practice: a firm vegetable marinated in vinaigrette, bound at the last moment with a richer dressing, and served in a lettuce cup rather than tossed loose in a bowl. Books like this one leaned on cross-references to a small stock of foundation recipes such as French Dressing and Cream Dressing, so the cook was expected to have both already at hand and needed only the assembly instructions.