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Salad Mixture
Endeavour to have your salad-herbs as fresh as possible; if you suspect they are not "morning gathered," they will be much refreshed by lying an hour or two in spring-water; then carefully wash and pick them, and trim off all the worm-eaten, slimy, cankered dry leaves; and, after washing, let them remain a while in the colander to drain; lastly, swing them gently in a clean napkin. When properly picked and cut, arrange them in the salad-dish. Boil a couple of eggs for twelve minutes, and put them in a basin of cold water for a little while--the yolks must be quite cold and hard, or they will not incorporate with the ingredients. Rub them through a sieve with a wooden spoon, and mix them with a table-spoonful of water or fine double cream, then add two table-spoonfuls of oil or melted butter; when these are well mixed, add, by degrees, a tea-spoonful of salt or powdered lump sugar, and the same of made mustard; when these are smoothly united, add very gradually three table-spoonfuls of vinegar, rub it with the other ingredients till thoroughly incorporated with them; cut up the whites of the eggs, and garnish the top of the salad with it. Let the sauce remain at the bottom of the bowl, and do not stir up the salad till it is to be eaten. We recommend the eaters to be mindful of the duty of mastication, without the due performance of which all undressed vegetables are troublesome company for the principal viscera, and some are even dangerously indigestible.
This is a cooked-yolk dressing, the ancestor of bottled salad cream, and the method matters more than the proportions. The instruction that carries the dish is the last one: the sauce sits in the bottom of the bowl and the leaves are not turned until the moment of eating.
- Cold, hard yolksTwelve minutes is a firm hard-boil, and the chilling is not fussiness. A warm yolk smears rather than sieves and the emulsion breaks; press the cold yolks through a fine sieve so they come out as dry powder.
- Made mustard"Made" mustard is mustard already mixed with liquid, i.e. prepared mustard from a jar. English mustard is the period-correct choice and is considerably hotter than Dijon, so start with less if you are using it.
- Powdered lump sugarLump sugar crushed fine, which is caster or superfine sugar today. Note the original offers salt or sugar as alternatives at that stage; most cooks will want the salt, and a pinch of sugar besides.
- Fine double creamDouble cream is roughly 48% fat, richer than American heavy cream. Either works here, and the water alternative gives a sharper, thinner dressing closer to a plain vinaigrette.
- The vinegar ratioThree tablespoons of vinegar to two of oil is inverted from modern taste, which runs about three parts oil to one of vinegar. Vinegar of the period was not standardised and its strength may not have matched today's 5%. Add the vinegar by degrees as instructed and stop when it tastes right to you.
- Melted butterButter appears as an alternative to salad oil in British recipes of this period, where good oil was often costly or of poor quality. It sets firm on chilled leaves; use oil unless you are curious about the period result.
- Drying the leavesThe soaking, draining and swinging in a napkin is what a salad spinner does. Do it properly regardless of equipment, since dressing will not cling to wet leaves and water thins the sauce in the bottom of the bowl.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; two eggs, two tablespoons of oil and three of vinegar will dress a large bowlful. The dressing is best made within an hour or two of serving and does not keep like a mayonnaise.
The closing sentence, with its warning about the "duty of mastication" and the fate of the "principal viscera," is the tell: passages of this kind in Victorian cookery books are generally traced to Dr William Kitchiner, who held a medical degree without practising and whose Cook's Oracle (1817) mixed recipes with digestive advice and was quarried by compilers for the rest of the century. The dressing itself belongs to a British tradition older than mayonnaise's dominance: hard yolk sieved and let down with cream, oil, mustard and vinegar, which is essentially the formula later sold in bottles as salad cream. The instruction to leave the sauce at the bottom of the bowl reflects a table practice now largely lost, where the salad arrived undressed and was tossed by whoever served it, on the sound principle that dressed leaves collapse within minutes.