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LETTUCE SALAD (a German recipe)
Prepare two large lettuces as above, shred them finely, and put them into the salad bowl. Cut four ounces of bacon into dice, fry these with a finely-minced onion for five or six minutes, and shake the pan over the fire to prevent them browning. Add to the bacon a little salt (the amount will depend upon the quality of the bacon), half a tea-spoonful of pepper, and a table-spoonful of vinegar; pour all over the lettuce, and mix thoroughly. Serve immediately. Probable cost, 6d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A hot bacon dressing poured over shredded lettuce — the German Salat mit Speck pattern. The whole thing turns on timing: the fat must be hot when it hits the leaves, and the salad must reach the table before they collapse.
- "Prepare as above"The instruction refers back to the preceding lettuce entry, which would ordinarily cover washing, discarding coarse outer leaves and drying. Wet lettuce will not take a fat-based dressing; spin or towel it dry before shredding.
- The hinge: keep the bacon pale"shake the pan over the fire to prevent them browning" is the instruction that matters. Render the dice over medium-low heat so they give up their fat and stay soft rather than colouring.
- BaconFour ounces is about 113 g. Use a fatty streaky or slab bacon rather than thin-cut rashers, which are often wet-cured and tend to steam rather than render. If the bacon yields little fat, top up with a spoonful of neutral oil.
- SaltThe caution about "the quality of the bacon" still applies: salt levels vary widely between cures. Taste the fat before adding any salt at all.
- PepperHalf a teaspoon of pepper for two lettuces is assertive by current taste. Start with a quarter teaspoon, freshly ground, and add more at the table.
- VinegarOne tablespoon against the rendered fat of four ounces of bacon makes a rich dressing; two tablespoons will taste sharper and more balanced to many. Cider or white wine vinegar suits it. The original adds the vinegar to the pan on the fire; adding it off the heat keeps more of it from boiling away.
- AssemblyPour while the fat is still sizzling and toss at once. The leaves should wilt slightly at the edges but not collapse, which is why the original insists on serving immediately.
- YieldFour to five as a side, as stated, assuming two full heads of romaine or butter lettuce. It is not a make-ahead dish and does not keep.
Warm bacon dressings on greens are a long-standing feature of German and Austrian home cooking, applied to lettuce, potato and to dandelion and other bitter leaves; the same idea travelled to Pennsylvania with German-speaking settlers and survives there as "hot bacon dressing" and wilted lettuce salad. Cassell's, compiled for late-Victorian British households, frequently tagged entries "a German recipe" or "a French recipe", marking the dish as foreign to its readers; English salads of the period were more usually dressed cold, whether with oil and vinegar or with a boiled cream-and-mustard dressing. The "probable cost, 6d" reflects the book's habit of pricing every dish, a convention that makes these volumes useful to economic historians as well as cooks.