Home › The Principles of Cookery › Ambrosial Salad
Ambrosial Salad
Take one and one-half cupfuls of cold potatoes, which have been boiled in clear stock, cut in dice, two and one-half cupfuls good, white celery, shredded into small Julienne strips (keep in water acidulated with lemon juice and dry thoroughly on a cloth before using), a few pickled nasturtium seeds and one can of truffles. There are usually five in a can. Select the best ones to cut in thin, oblong strips, and the rest shave into small, transparent slices. Boil two eggs hard, cut the whites into twelve equal strips, pointed at both ends; put the yolks through a fine strainer. Chop fine two table-spoonfuls of parsley, wash and thoroughly dry five very small, crisp lettuce hearts. Mix potatoes, celery, nasturtium seeds, odd-shaped pieces of truffles, and the parsley with a generous supply of highly seasoned French dressing and add the yolks carefully. Rub a salad dish with a cut onion. Arrange the salad in a mound; imbed one of the lettuce hearts in the top and radiate from it the white egg slices, alternating with the long truffle strips. Around the base, in the equal spaces between the other lettuce rosettes, place at regular intervals the remainder of the long pieces of truffles cut in halves. They will look as black as velvet. Probable cost, 2s.
An arranged composed salad from the era when a salad was expected to be built rather than tossed. Nothing here is difficult, but the effect depends entirely on the components being bone dry before dressing.
- The hinge: dry everythingWet celery and wet lettuce will thin the dressing and slump the mound within minutes. Dry the julienned celery on a cloth as instructed, and spin or blot the lettuce hearts thoroughly.
- Potatoes boiled in stockCook waxy potatoes whole in unsalted or lightly salted clear stock so they absorb flavour but do not disintegrate. "Clear stock" here means an unthickened, degreased broth; about 1 1/2 cups of diced cooked potato comes from roughly 1/2 to 3/4 lb raw.
- Pickled nasturtium seedsGreen nasturtium seed pods pickled in vinegar, a standard nineteenth-century kitchen-garden preserve sometimes called poor man's capers. Small capers or caper berries stand in with no loss.
- Canned trufflesA can of five whole truffles was a purchasable luxury for a well-off Victorian household and is far dearer now. Preserved truffles in jars, truffle peelings, or a very small amount of fresh truffle shaved thin all work; the recipe wants them chiefly for the black-on-white visual contrast.
- French dressingIn this book that means a plain vinaigrette, not a creamy bottled dressing: roughly three parts oil to one part vinegar or lemon juice, with salt and pepper. "Highly seasoned" is meant literally, since potato and celery both blunt seasoning.
- The eggsHard-boil so the yolks are set but not chalky, about 9-10 minutes from boiling, then cool in cold water. Twelve neat pointed strips are easiest to cut from halved whites with a small sharp knife; add the sieved yolk last and fold gently or it will disappear into the dressing.
- Onion-rubbed dishRubbing the bowl with a cut onion gives a faint background note without any onion texture. Use a mild onion and one pass only.
- Yield and timingThe five lettuce hearts are structural garnish rather than portions, so no yield is stated; the quantities suit a small first course or side salad for a few people. Dress and build immediately before serving; assembled, it holds perhaps fifteen minutes before the lettuce wilts.
- Probable costThe 2s. figure is the book's estimate in pre-decimal British currency, two shillings, given as a guide to whether a dish suited the household budget.
Cassell's belongs to the age of the composed salad, when a salad's merit lay as much in its architecture as its flavour: a mound, a crown, radiating spokes, regular intervals. The style is generally traced to French service and the influence of chefs such as Careme on English and American household cookery, where dishes were arranged to be looked at down the length of a table. "Ambrosial" is simply a boast about deliciousness, not a fixed dish name. The ingredient list reads like a snapshot of what a well-run Victorian kitchen might have had to hand: potatoes cooked in the day's stock rather than water, a jar of home-pickled nasturtium seeds from the garden, celery blanched white in the earth, and truffles from a tin, then a luxury but a purchasable one. The instruction that the truffle strips "will look as black as velvet" is the point of the whole exercise.