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Water-Cress and Pickle Salad
Take some seasoned cress and put it in a border round a dish, regulating the quantity by the number of eaters. Then cut into quarters as many hard-boiled eggs as there are guests, and put them in the centre on a bed of any vegetable salad that may be approved-one of potato is often liked. The eggs should stand well above the cress. Then cut up some pickles that will contrast well in colour, or use them whole if small; lay them outside the border of cress, and serve. If liked, the accompanying meat can be cut into thin slices and put under the eggs, a few of the nicest pieces being kept to garnish the cress. The dish then becomes a "salad of cold meat with eggs and pickles."
A composed salad rather than a tossed one, built as a ring of dressed watercress with eggs at the centre. The instructions are deliberately loose; the only fixed proportion is one egg per person.
- "Seasoned cress""Seasoned cress" almost certainly means watercress already dressed — oil, vinegar, salt and pepper — though the recipe gives no proportions; a ratio of about three parts oil to one of vinegar is the usual modern default. Dress it at the last possible moment, since watercress collapses quickly once it meets acid and salt.
- Watercress todayBuy cultivated bunched or bagged watercress rather than gathering wild cress from streams, which can carry liver fluke and agricultural runoff. Trim the thickest stems, wash in cold water and spin or shake very dry so the dressing clings.
- QuantitiesReckon one hard-boiled egg per person and a generous handful of cress each — roughly 25–30 g trimmed weight. A 100 g supermarket bag serves three or four in a border of this kind.
- The eggsEggs for quartering want firm yolks without the grey ring: about 9–10 minutes at a bare simmer for large eggs, then straight into cold water. Cut them with a wet knife or a wire egg slicer so the yolks stay whole.
- The vegetable baseThe potato salad underneath is structural — it holds the egg quarters upright so they "stand well above the cress". Use a firm waxy potato dressed while warm; a floury one will slump.
- PicklesVictorian pickles here mean the sharp mixed sort — gherkins, small onions, cauliflower, red cabbage, walnuts. Colour contrast is the whole point of the instruction, so choose two or three that differ, and drain them well or the vinegar will run into the cress.
- The cold meat versionSliced cold roast beef, ham, tongue or chicken all suit. Slice it thinly across the grain and let it come to cool room temperature rather than serving it fridge-cold, which mutes the flavour.
- Assembly and timingEverything except the cress can be prepared hours ahead and the dish built in five minutes. Serve immediately; it does not hold.
Watercress was one of the cheapest green things in Victorian Britain, grown commercially in the chalk streams of Hampshire, Kent and Dorset and carried into London by early train for sale by street hawkers — bunches were a common breakfast food for the poor, eaten with bread and salt. Cassell's, an encyclopaedic household dictionary aimed at middle-class kitchens with a servant or two, treats it instead as a garnish and a salad green, and this entry sits squarely in the tradition of the made-over dish: cold joint from yesterday's dinner, dressed up with eggs, pickles and a ring of green so that it arrives at table looking like something intended rather than something left. The vagueness about quantities is characteristic of the genre; the cook is expected to judge by the number of eaters, and the recipe's real content is the arrangement — border, centre, height, contrasting colour outside — which is a lesson in presentation more than in cookery.