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SAXON SALAD (sometimes called Sardonic Salad)
Take two Dutch herrings, soak them in water, boil, cut them first into thin slices and then into narrow strips. Cut up cold meat in the same way, also some sour juicy apples, and a little pickled beetroot. Mix well, and season with pepper and a small onion minced very fine. Moisten the salad with oil, vinegar, and milk or cream in equal parts.
A German-style herring salad of the sort that appeared on Victorian supper tables, and one where the dressing needs more care than the original suggests.
- Dutch herringsThese are salt-cured herring sold in barrels, not fresh fish and not the sweet-pickled sort in jars. Look for salt herring or maatjes fillets at a Dutch, German or Eastern European grocer; soak 6-12 hours in cold water, changing it two or three times, until a tasted sliver is pleasantly salty rather than fierce.
- The boiling stepSalt herring of this period were often coarse and heavily cured, so a brief poach softened them. With modern fillets, no more than a minute or two in barely simmering water is enough, and good soaked maatjes can be left uncooked. Long boiling turns them to shreds.
- The dressing is the hingeEqual parts oil, vinegar and cream can split if the vinegar hits the dairy directly. Whisk the vinegar into the oil first, then stir the cream in slowly at the end, and dress the salad just before serving. Full-fat cream holds better than milk.
- Cold meatThe recipe specifies only "cold meat"; leftover roast beef, veal, tongue or ham all suit. Cut it in matchsticks the same size as the herring so the salad binds rather than separating into layers.
- Sour juicy applesBramley, Granny Smith or any sharp eating apple. Toss the strips in a little of the vinegar as you cut to stop them browning.
- BeetrootPickled beetroot, drained and chopped small, and used sparingly -- more than a spoonful or two and everything on the plate turns magenta within minutes.
- SeasoningHold back on salt until the salad is mixed and tasted; the herring and the pickles usually supply enough. Grate the onion or mince it very fine, then rinse it briefly if it is a strong one.
- Yield and servingTwo herrings and an equal bulk of meat make a first course for four, or a light supper for two. Chill an hour to let the flavours settle, and serve on lettuce with rye bread or boiled potatoes.
Herring salad -- Heringssalat in German, sillsallad in Sweden -- is a fixture of the northern European cold table, where salt herring, beetroot, apple and cold meat were the reliable winter larder rather than a deliberate flavour combination. Cassell's calls it Saxon, pointing at Saxony and the German-speaking cooking that Victorian editors were steadily borrowing from; the alternative name "Sardonic" looks like a printer's or a punster's mangling rather than any real description, and no explanation of it survives in the book. The dressing of oil, vinegar and cream in equal parts is characteristic of the era, when soured cream and thin cream stood in for the mayonnaise that would come to dominate such salads later. Salt herring reached British kitchens in barrels by the shipload -- much of it cured in Scotland, some of it Dutch -- cheap enough to be widely eaten and durable enough to be treated as a pantry ingredient rather than fish.