Home › The Principles of Cookery › Salmagundi
Salmagundi
A salmagundi is a sort of mosaic made with pickled herring, cold dressed chicken, salt beef, radishes, endive, olives, etc., all arranged with regard to contrast in colour as well as flavour, and served with oil, vinegar, pepper, and salt. The following is a good recipe for a salmagundi. Take a large round dish; place in the centre a bunch of fresh endive, and lay round it strips of herring or anchovy, interspersed with neat slices from the breast of a chicken. Put round these a band of hard-boiled yolk of egg chopped small, then one of green parsley, then slices of red beef or tongue, then the white of egg, and lastly a garland of sprigs of water-cress. Insert trimmed olives, green capers, radishes, barberries, etc., wherever they will be most effective. Serve with salad sauce. Sometimes the herrings for a salmagundi are opened, and the flesh is taken out without injuring the skin. It is then minced with an equal quantity of cold chicken and grated ham or tongue, seasoned rather highly, and put back into the skins till they look plump and of a good shape.