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Chicken Salad
Cut cold boiled chicken into dice. Mix 2 cupfuls of the chicken meat with 1 cupful of celery cut into dice. Stir 1 tablespoonful of vinegar into 3 tablespoonfuls of oil, season with salt and pepper, and then pour it over the chicken and celery. When well mixed turn into a dish lined with crisp lettuce leaves, and pour mayonnaise dressing over all. Garnish with stoned olives and hard-boiled eggs. Turkey salad is made in the same way.
A straightforward composed salad of the period, dressed twice: first a vinaigrette to season the meat, then mayonnaise over the top. The two-stage dressing is the point and worth keeping.
- Dress the chicken while it is cool, not coldThe vinegar-and-oil step is there to season the meat itself rather than coat it. Toss the diced chicken and celery in the vinaigrette and let it sit 15-20 minutes before the mayonnaise goes on, or the mayonnaise simply sits on bland cubes.
- ProportionsOne part vinegar to three parts oil is a standard vinaigrette ratio and needs no adjustment. The recipe specifies only 'vinegar'; a mild wine or cider vinegar suits it better than sharp distilled white.
- YieldTwo cupfuls of chicken with one of celery serves four as a light lunch, two as a main plate. That is roughly the meat from one poached breast-and-thigh pair, or about 12 oz cooked.
- Cold boiled chickenThe recipe calls for chicken already boiled and cooled, whether left over or cooked for the purpose. Poached chicken cooled in its own liquid gives the same moist result; roast chicken works but is drier and takes more dressing.
- Dice sizeCut the chicken and celery to the same size, around half an inch. The recipe specifies dice for both, not shreds or mince.
- Stoned olives"Stoned" means pitted. The recipe does not say which kind; green olives in brine suit the dish, though black would not be wrong.
- MayonnaiseCommercial mayonnaise is pasteurised and fine. If you make your own with raw yolks, use pasteurised eggs and serve the salad the same day, keeping it refrigerated, since nothing in the dish is cooked after assembly.