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Salad, Every-Day
In warm weather cold meat sent to table with a good salad, and a little cucumber or pickle, often proves more acceptable than the most expensive joint served hot. To make the salad, wash one or two lettuces, throw away the outer and decayed leaves, and wash the others, handling them as lightly as possible. Drain them, and dry them perfectly, first by shaking them in a colander or salad-basket, and afterwards by shaking them in a napkin held loosely by the four corners. When the napkin has absorbed all the moisture, shred the lettuce--with a silver knife if possible. Rub the salad-bowl three or four times across with a clove of garlic, or with a slice of onion, and put in the shredded lettuce. Mix thoroughly in the salad-spoon a salt-spoonful of salt, half a salt-spoonful of pepper, and a mustard-spoonful of mixed mustard. Sprinkle the seasoning over the salad, and work it well in. Pour upon it as much Lucca oil as will cover it, and work this in; then add a table-spoonful of good vinegar and, if it can be had, a dessert-spoonful of tarragon vinegar. The salad should not be mixed till the moment of serving. If liked, shredded celery, a head of endive, small salad, watercress, sliced beetroot, sliced cucumber, spring radishes, and chopped green onions may be added to the salad. Time, plenty of time must be given for drying the lettuce perfectly, as the success of a salad depends in a great measure upon the lettuce being quite dry Probable cost of moderate-sized salad, 8d.
A plain British salad of the 1870s-90s, built in the bowl rather than dressed from a jar. Most of it translates directly; a few terms and one piece of equipment need explaining.
- Dry the leaves, or nothing else mattersThe recipe says so at the end, and it is the hinge. Water clinging to lettuce dilutes the vinegar and stops the oil from coating the leaves, so the dressing slides to the bottom of the bowl. A salad spinner does in ten seconds what the colander-and-napkin routine does in five minutes.
- Lucca oilNineteenth-century British shorthand for good olive oil, Lucca in Tuscany being the district whose oil had the highest reputation with British buyers. Any decent extra-virgin olive oil is the modern equivalent.
- The spoon measuresA salt-spoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, so the seasoning is roughly 1/4 tsp salt and a scant 1/8 tsp pepper. A mustard-spoon is a similar small size; read it as about 1/4 teaspoon of prepared mustard.
- Mixed mustardPrepared mustard, meaning mustard powder already worked to a paste with water or vinegar, not the dry powder. English mustard is the period-correct choice and gives the dressing its bite and a little emulsifying help.
- The silver knifeAdvice from the era of carbon-steel blades, which discoloured lettuce and left a metallic taste. Stainless steel is fine. Tearing by hand is still gentler than any knife.
- "Small salad"Seedling greens, chiefly mustard and cress cut a few days after sprouting, sold by the punnet. Micro-greens or a handful of cress are the direct substitute.
- ProportionsThe oil is not measured, only 'as much as will cover it', so no fixed ratio can be read out of the recipe; judge it by eye against the tablespoon of vinegar and the dessert-spoonful of tarragon vinegar. Add the oil first, as written: it films the leaves and keeps the vinegar from wilting them.
- Yield and timingThe recipe gives no number of servings; one or two lettuces is a side dish for a small table. Mix it at the moment of serving, as the recipe directs; salted, oiled lettuce softens quickly.
Cassell's is describing the standard British salad of the later nineteenth century, which was less a dish in its own right than the companion to cold joints in warm weather. The method of building the dressing in the bowl, seasoning first, then oil, then vinegar, is set out as a matter of course; the often-quoted rhyme about a spendthrift for the oil and a miser for the vinegar circulated widely in Victorian cookery writing and is generally traced to a Spanish proverb. The garlic-rubbed bowl is a characteristically cautious English concession: garlic as a ghost of flavour rather than an ingredient. The costing of eightpence, given as a matter of course throughout Cassell's, reflects a book written for households keeping accounts and a cook who had to answer for them.