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Chicken Salad, Plain
Take a well-boiled fowl, and cut it into neat, small pieces. Make a pickle of equal parts of oil and vinegar, with a little finely-minced onion, salt, and pepper; let the pieces lie in this two or three hours, turning them occasionally that the chicken may become impregnated with the flavour of the pickle. Prepare some lettuce; if it is a young, the little heads may be cut into halves; if large, the hearts may be cut length-ways and divided; but especial care should be taken in making salads that the lettuce is perfectly dry. It is a good plan to wash it some hours before it is needed, and hang it in a wire basket in an airy situation. If after this it is not quite free from moisture, two or three leaves at a time should be put into a clean dry towel, and shaken gently about. A salad is never properly made unless attention is paid to this point, as the dressing, instead of mixing with the salad, will be all at the bottom of the bowl. Make a sauce as in the following recipe. Arrange the chicken and salad in the dish as prettily as you can, and pour the sauce over them; garnish with thin slices of beetroot cut into shapes with an ordinary pastry cutter, hard-boiled eggs cut into slices or quarters, and a little green parsley between the pieces of egg. A chicken salad neatly and tastefully arranged has a good appearance, and is generally a welcome dish. Time to boil the chicken, half an hour. Probable cost: chicken, 2s. 6d.; salad and dressing, 1s. Sufficient for six persons.
A cold composed salad of poached chicken in vinaigrette, dressed at the table with a separate sauce. Two things carry it: the chicken must be properly cooked and thoroughly cooled, and the lettuce must be bone dry.
- The "pickle" is a marinadeEqual parts oil and vinegar is sharper than modern taste generally wants; three parts oil to one of vinegar suits most palates, with the minced onion, salt and pepper as given. The recipe specifies only "oil"; salad oil in Victorian cookery usually meant olive oil, and a good olive oil suits here.
- Marinate cold, not on the counterTwo or three hours at Victorian larder temperature is two or three hours in the refrigerator now. Cooked chicken sitting in a warm kitchen for that long is exactly the window in which Staphylococcus and Salmonella multiply.
- Half an hour is optimisticThat timing assumes a small young fowl cut up or a bird finished in its own hot liquor. A whole 3-4 lb chicken poached at a bare simmer needs 45-60 minutes, and the thickest part of the thigh should reach 165F/74C. Cool it in the poaching liquid for moisture, then chill before cutting.
- Drying the lettuceThe wire basket hung in an airy situation is a salad spinner. Spin, then roll the leaves in a clean tea towel and refrigerate uncovered for an hour if you have it. The reasoning in the original is exactly right: water on the leaf repels the dressing and it all pools at the bottom.
- The sauce that followsThe original cross-references a dressing given in the next entry, which is not reproduced here. Any thick mayonnaise, slackened with a spoonful of cream or of the marinade, does the job; pour it over only at the moment of serving or the leaves collapse.
- Beetroot garnishCooked beetroot, sliced and stamped out with an ordinary pastry cutter. Cut and place it last, and keep it at the edge of the dish, or it bleeds pink through the mayonnaise.
- Costs and yield2s. 6d. for a fowl and 1s. for salad and dressing are Victorian prices and are of historical interest only. The stated yield of six holds if the chicken is a decent size and the dish is one of several on a cold table; as a main course it serves four.
The entry is really a lesson in drying salad leaves, hung on a chicken. Cold poultry in a vinaigrette, banked with lettuce and finished with a mayonnaise, belonged to the Victorian supper and luncheon table, where dishes were made in advance, arranged for looks and eaten at room temperature or cooler. The beetroot cut with a pastry cutter, the sliced hard-boiled egg, the parsley set between the pieces: this is food composed to be looked at down the length of a table. The instruction to marinate the cooked meat before dressing it is worth noting, since it is a step most modern chicken salads skip, and it is the reason the finished dish tastes of something other than mayonnaise. The name "salad" in this period still covered a broad territory, from a plain bowl of dressed leaves to elaborate moulded affairs, and the plainness advertised in this title is relative.