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Asparagus Salad
Cut the tender parts from one bundle of boiled asparagus into pieces of the same length and tie them in bunches, then cook them in boiling salted water and put them on ice. When about to serve put the asparagus into a salad bowl, and pour over it French dressing.
A plain cold asparagus salad of the sort that closed out a dinner course around 1900. Everything depends on not overcooking the spears and on chilling them dry.
- A bundle of asparagusMarket bundles today run roughly 1 to 1 1/2 lb; period bundles varied and were often larger. Reckon on about four modest servings from a modern bundle once the woody ends are snapped off, and buy two if it is the salad course for six. The recipe itself gives no yield.
- Cook it brieflyNote that this recipe starts from asparagus already boiled, so the salted water is a second, short pass. Period recipes often boiled asparagus fifteen or twenty minutes; if you are cooking from raw, thin spears need 2 to 3 minutes in salted boiling water, thick ones 4 to 5, and should be pulled while they still have resistance at the stem end.
- Why the bunches are tiedTying the trimmed spears in small bundles with kitchen string keeps them from knocking about and breaking in the pot, and lets you lift the whole lot out at once. It is worth doing even for a short cook.
- "Put them on ice"This means chill and hold cold; in period kitchens that generally meant setting them on ice rather than plunging them into iced water, though a cold bath straight from the pot does the same job of stopping the cooking. Drain and pat dry either way so the dressing is not diluted.
- French dressingIn this period that is simply oil and vinegar with salt and pepper, roughly three parts oil to one of vinegar, whisked or shaken to combine. It is not the sweet orange bottled dressing sold under that name today.
- Dress at the tableDress at the last moment -- Acid dulls the colour of green vegetables, which is why the recipe has the dressing poured over only when the dish is about to be served. Asparagus left standing in vinaigrette loses colour and firmness.
- ServingKeep the spears in their tied bunches on the plate or cut the string just before serving so they lie parallel. Reckon on about four servings as a separate salad course; the recipe does not say.
Cold dressed asparagus belongs to the long European habit of serving the spears as a course to themselves rather than as a side vegetable, most familiar in the French asperges en vinaigrette. Household compendia of this sort carried whole chapters of salads because the salad course had become a fixed part of the American formal dinner, and vegetables served cold under oil and vinegar were a simple way to fill it. Asparagus was still strongly seasonal and a spring luxury sold in tied bundles at market, which is why the recipe measures by the bundle rather than by weight and why it takes the trouble to keep the bundles intact through cooking and onto the plate.