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Cheese Salad
To 1 cup cooked chopped chicken, add 1/2 pound soft American cheese and 1/2 cup pickled chopped cauliflower. Rub through sieve, yolks of 2 hard-cooked eggs, add 1 teaspoon French mustard, 4 tablespoons melted Crisco, 3 tablespoons vinegar, red pepper, paprika, and salt to taste. Pour this sauce over salad and garnish with whites of eggs cut in slices and branches of pickled cauliflower.
A chicken-and-cheese salad bound with a sieved-yolk dressing, from a book written to sell shortening. The one thing to fix is the fat: melted Crisco sets solid as it cools and will turn the dressing grainy and waxy on the plate.
- Swap the melted shorteningThe 4 tablespoons of melted Crisco are there because the book was published to promote Crisco. Solid shortening is firm at ordinary room temperature, so a cold salad dressed with it feels pasty. Use 4 tablespoons of a neutral oil or olive oil instead and the dressing behaves like a proper vinaigrette.
- "Soft American cheese"In this period the phrase most likely meant a young, mild, still-moist Cheddar-type cheese, not the processed slice. Look for a mild young Cheddar or Colby, half a pound, diced small or crumbled.
- French mustardPrepared Dijon-style mustard, smooth rather than the sharp yellow ballpark type. A teaspoon is the whole seasoning backbone here, so use something with flavour.
- Red pepperCayenne. A pinch, not a teaspoon; the paprika is separate and mostly for colour.
- Pickled cauliflowerA common component of mixed pickles. Jarred giardiniera cauliflower florets work; drain them well or the dressing goes thin. Keep a few whole florets back for the garnish, which is probably what the recipe means by "branches."
- The sieved yolksPushing the two hard-cooked yolks through a fine sieve is what makes the dressing cling rather than separate. A fork-mashed yolk leaves lumps; take the extra minute. Whisk in the oil gradually, then the vinegar.
- BalanceFour parts fat to three parts vinegar is sharp by modern taste, and the pickled cauliflower adds more acid. Taste before you pour it all on and hold back some of the vinegar if it bites.
- Yield and servingEnough for four as a first course or light lunch, on lettuce or in a hollowed tomato. Dress it shortly before serving so the cheese does not weep.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and issued by Procter & Gamble as promotional literature for Crisco, the hydrogenated vegetable shortening the company introduced in 1911. That explains the odd instruction to melt shortening for a cold salad dressing: the book's purpose was to find uses for the product, including places where oil or butter would plainly have served better. The salad itself belongs to a broad American family of chopped meat-and-cheese salads bound in a cooked or sieved-yolk dressing, often said to be a practical way to stretch leftover roast chicken. The pickled cauliflower is a period marker too: pickles were a household's main source of bright acid all winter.