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Vinaigrette of Cold Meat
Take any kind of cold cooked meat, cut it into neat slices, and put them upon a dish with cold potatoes cut into slices, hard-boiled eggs cut into quarters, and slices of beetroot. Season rather highly with pepper and salt, pour over all oil and vinegar, in the proportion of three table-spoonfuls of oil to two of vinegar, and toss the mixture lightly together with a fork. Sliced cucumber, chopped parsley, and finely-minced onion may be added if liked, and a few drops of tarragon or chilli vinegar may be mixed with the ordinary vinegar. Sometimes the various ingredients are sent to table prettily arranged in rings round a dish, with the colours contrasting, and they are mixed with the salad dressing at the moment of serving. A vinaigrette of cold boiled beef is excellent.
A cold-meat salad dressed at the table, and one of the few Victorian leftover dishes that needs almost no translation. The points below cover proportions, safe handling of cooked meat, and how to keep the plate from going grey.
- The dressing ratioThree tablespoons oil to two of vinegar is unusually sharp by modern standards, where three-to-one is the default. It suits fatty boiled beef and boiled potatoes, which absorb a great deal; taste before adding all of it, and expect to want a little more oil with leaner meat like chicken or veal.
- What the oil would have beenIn a British kitchen of this period "oil" in a salad meant olive oil, sold by grocers and Italian warehousemen and also by chemists under the name sweet oil. A fruity extra-virgin is closer to the intent than a neutral seed oil.
- Chilli and tarragon vinegarBoth were flavoured vinegars, whole dried chillies or fresh tarragon steeped in vinegar for a week or two, made at home from published recipes though also available bottled. Bottled tarragon vinegar is still sold; for chilli vinegar, a few drops of any clean hot-pepper vinegar does the same job. The recipe specifies a few drops, not a spoonful.
- Beetroot bleedsSliced beetroot will stain potato, egg and dressing pink within minutes. If you want the ringed presentation the recipe describes, keep the beetroot on its own arc, dress it separately, and combine only as it goes to table. The recipe does specify that the arranged version is mixed with the dressing at the moment of serving, though it gives no reason for it.
- Cold meat, handled properlyThis dish depends on cooked meat that has been chilled promptly and kept refrigerated. Use meat cooked within the previous two or three days, slice it cold, and return the assembled dish to the fridge if it is not going straight out.
- Cutting the meatNeat slices means thin and across the grain. Cold boiled beef and cold roast lamb slice best straight from the refrigerator with a long, sharp knife; warm meat tears and gives ragged edges that soak up too much vinegar.
- OnionFinely minced raw onion in a salad that sits for even half an hour turns aggressive. Soak the mince in cold water for ten minutes and drain it, or use a shallot instead.
- YieldNo quantities are given because this was made from whatever was left. As a guide, about 1 lb of cold meat, 1 lb of cooked potatoes, three eggs and one medium beetroot makes a main-course salad for four.
The name comes straight from French: a vinaigrette is simply a dressing of vinegar and oil, and by the nineteenth century the word had crossed into English cookery for both the sauce and dishes built on it. The recipe belongs to the large Victorian family of made-over dishes, the recipes that stood between Sunday's joint and Wednesday's economy, alongside rissoles, hashes and what might be compared to the salmagundi-style arranged salads that were their showier cousins. The ringed arrangement, with the colours contrasting, can be read as a domestic echo of the elaborate cold-buffet work that professional cooks did for a buffet froid. The recommendation of cold boiled beef is telling: boiled beef with carrots and dumplings is often said to have been a fixture of the British table, and its firm, well-seasoned flesh slices cleanly and takes a sharp dressing better than roast meat does.