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Salad, Winter
Take two lettuces and wash them thoroughly, after taking off the outer leaves. Tear them up finely, and proceed in the same manner with the half of an endive. Peel and slice a small boiled beetroot, and well wash a little mustard and cress, first cutting off the stalks. Mix the salad together, and dress with mayonnaise or plain dressing. Probable cost, 6d., without the dressing.
A plain assembly recipe that assumes you know how to make a dressing and have a cooked beetroot on hand. The only real technique is in the washing and drying.
- Quantities and yieldTwo heads of lettuce plus half a head of endive makes enough for four to six as a side salad. English lettuces of the period were smaller and looser than a modern iceberg; two butterhead or little gem heads are closer in spirit than two supermarket romaine hearts.
- EndiveIn British usage this means curly endive (frisée), not Belgian endive/chicory. Either works, but frisée gives the bitter, frizzy contrast the recipe is after. Belgian endive will be milder and crunchier.
- Mustard and cressSold in Britain as a punnet of seedling shoots grown together, mustard being coarser and hotter, cress finer. Snipping off the stalks close to the growing medium and washing well is the point of the instruction; the seedlings carry grit. Substitute watercress or micro-greens if unavailable.
- Boiled beetrootBoil unpeeled with an inch of stalk left on so it does not bleed, 40-60 minutes for a small root, then slip the skin off under cold water. Vacuum-packed cooked beetroot is a fair substitute; avoid the sort packed in malt vinegar, which will overwhelm the dressing.
- Add the beetroot lastSliced beetroot dyes everything it touches pink within minutes. Mix the leaves and dress them, then lay the slices on top rather than tossing them through.
- Dry the leavesNothing in the recipe says so, but mayonnaise and vinaigrette both slide off wet leaves and pool at the bottom of the bowl. Spin or pat dry before dressing.
- "Plain dressing"The alternative to mayonnaise would have been a simple oil-and-vinegar dressing. Ratios varied in period practice, but something in the region of three parts oil to one of vinegar, with salt, pepper and often a little made mustard, is a reasonable modern reading. The recipe itself gives no details.
- Probable cost, 6d.Cassell's gives a "probable cost" for most of its recipes, as an aid to household budgeting. Sixpence is a modest but real sum for a salad in this period, and may reflect the cost of greens out of season.
The whole premise of a "winter salad" belongs to a period before year-round imported produce, when the salad bowl in January had to be built from what kept or what could be forced: stored beetroot, hardy endive, lettuce raised under glass, and mustard and cress grown indoors on a damp cloth in a matter of days. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery is a large late-Victorian compendium running to thousands of entries, and it separates summer and winter salads, which fits a seasonal kitchen; it also gives a probable cost for most recipes, of a kind useful to a household running to a budget. Mustard and cress was a convenient British winter green because it needed neither garden nor season, and it is still sold in punnets today.