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Chicken Salad, Rich
Boil a large chicken until quite tender, and, when it is cold, pick off the meat in small pieces. Take as much celery as there is chicken, and cut it into pieces about an inch long, put it in a little water to make it crisp, then drain and dry it thoroughly. Put the yolk of one egg into a large basin, and beat well with a silver fork until it begins to feel thick. Add first a heaped tea-spoonful of mustard, and afterwards six tea-spoonful of oil, putting in the first two tea-spoonfuls by three drops at a time, and beating the sauce thoroughly between each addition. To every sixth tea-spoonful of oil put one teaspoonful of lemon-juice, and repeat until half a pint of oil and the juice of a large lemon have been used. Flavour with three pinches of salt and two of red pepper, and, last of all, put in a table-spoonful of cream. The sauce should be thick, and highly flavoured. Mix the chicken with the celery, pour half the dressing into the salad and the rest on the top, and garnish according to taste. Time, half an hour to boil the chicken. Probable cost: chicken, 2s. 6d.; celery, 3d. per head. Sufficient for six persons.
A Victorian chicken salad is really a mayonnaise recipe with poached chicken attached, and the two halves need different kinds of attention: the dressing needs patience, the chicken needs longer than the book says.
- The half-hour is wrongA large boiling fowl will not be "quite tender" in thirty minutes, and modern poultry needs to reach 74C/165F at the thickest part of the thigh. Expect 60-90 minutes at a bare simmer for a whole 1.5-2 kg bird, then cool it in its own liquid so the breast does not dry out.
- Half a pint of oilThis is an imperial pint, so half a pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. That is a great deal of oil for a single yolk; one yolk will just carry it if you are meticulous, but two yolks give a far more forgiving emulsion.
- The hinge: three drops at a timeThe instruction to add the first two teaspoonfuls of oil in three-drop increments is the whole recipe. Once the base is thick and glossy you can move to a thin steady stream, but rush the opening and the sauce splits.
- Silver fork, and whySilver fork — the recipe calls for a silver fork and a large basin. The usual explanation is that iron and older tinned steel could taint or discolour egg and acid dressings. A stainless whisk and a glass or ceramic basin do the same job. A food processor works, but the dressing comes out stiffer and less silky.
- Raw eggThe dressing is uncooked. Use pasteurised eggs or pasteurised yolks if serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immunocompromised, and keep the finished salad refrigerated until it goes to the table.
- Red pepper"Red pepper" here is cayenne, not paprika and not sweet pepper. Two pinches in 10 fl oz of dressing is a background warmth rather than heat.
- Crisping the celeryA short soak in cold water, ideally iced, firms limp celery; drying it thoroughly afterwards matters more than the soak, since water thins the dressing and makes the salad weep.
- Yield and dressingSix servings as written, which is generous. The dressing is meant to be thick and highly seasoned because half of it is poured over the top as a coating rather than tossed through.
Cassell's calls this salad "rich," a version for a household that could afford both a whole chicken and as much celery as chicken, and the price note tells you why the qualifier was needed: two shillings and sixpence for the bird was not a trifle. Chicken salad of this kind, cold poached fowl bound with a hand-beaten mayonnaise, could be made in advance and served without carving. Celery is often said to have been a natural partner because it was in season through the cold months when a boiled fowl was likely to be on hand, and because its crispness stood up to a heavy dressing in a way that lettuce did not. The dressing itself is a plain drop-by-drop mayonnaise finished with cream, and the recipe calls for a silver fork.