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French Salad
It would be difficult to particularize a French salad. It is composed of everything or anything. Many improvised dishes of salad, such as beans, potatoes, cauliflower, and celery (cooked), are served at a French table, seasoned with salt, pepper, oil, vinegar, chopped tarragon, or a little tarragon vinegar. Fish salads, too, are highly relished, namely, the remains of any solid fish, such as cod, sole, or turbot, for which the following sauce will be found excellent, as it will be also for a lettuce or other vegetable salad: Bruise the yolks of 2 hard-boiled eggs with a wooden spoon, and moisten with a raw egg; put this egg-mixture into a bowl, with 2 saltspoonfuls of salt, a little pepper, and a pinch of cayenne; add by degrees oil and vinegar, alternately, until the required quantity, 3 tablespoonfuls of oil and one of vinegar, which may be tarragon, has been mixed. Keep the sauce stirred and well smoothed with the spoon. Add 1/2 teaspoonful of shred onion, and the same of chervil and tarragon, if plain vinegar has been used with the oil. 2 tablespoonfuls of thick cream or melted butter will make the sauce richer and better, and the whites of eggs may be chopped and added to the salad.
The essay at the start is scene-setting; the recipe proper is the egg sauce, a hard-yolk emulsion closer to a soft rémoulade than to modern mayonnaise. It suits cooked vegetables and flaked cooked fish as well as lettuce.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, so 2 saltspoonfuls is 1/2 teaspoon of salt. That is correct for the volume here, which finishes at roughly 1/3 to 1/2 cup of sauce.
- The hinge: add the oil in a threadThe cooked yolks are the body, the raw yolk the emulsifier. Add oil a few drops at a time at first, stirring constantly, and alternate with the vinegar as directed; poured in fast it will slide apart into an oily puddle.
- ProportionsThree parts oil to one of vinegar is much sharper than a modern mayonnaise and closer to a thick vinaigrette in flavour. If it tastes aggressive, the 2 tablespoonfuls of cream or melted butter at the end are the period's own remedy, and they do round it out.
- Raw eggThe sauce is never heated. Use a pasteurised egg, or at least a very fresh one, keep the finished sauce refrigerated, and use it the same day rather than holding it.
- Oil"Oil" in a book of this date will normally mean olive oil. If you plan to add the cream, a milder or neutral oil is easier to balance than a strongly peppery green olive oil.
- Tarragon vinegarStill sold, and worth having for this. If you use plain vinegar instead, the recipe correctly tells you to put the herbs back in as fresh shredded onion, chervil and tarragon; dried tarragon is a poor stand-in and dried chervil is nearly flavourless.
- Dressing the cooked vegetablesBeans, potatoes, cauliflower and celery take up seasoning far better while still warm. Dress them warm, then chill; a cold boiled potato absorbs almost nothing.
- Fish saladUse cooked fish that has been properly chilled, flaked into large pieces, and fold the sauce in gently at the last moment. Cod, sole and turbot flake apart readily if stirred about.
- YieldAs written the sauce dresses a salad for four to six. It thickens on standing; loosen with a teaspoon of water or vinegar rather than more oil.
This is the French approach to salad as an English-language household book of the period understood it: not a bowl of leaves but whatever cooked vegetable or leftover fish was to hand, sharpened with oil, vinegar and tarragon. The sauce itself belongs to an older family than modern mayonnaise, using sieved hard-boiled yolks for body with only one raw yolk to bind. Tarragon vinegar, chervil and shredded onion recur in dishes labelled "French" in nineteenth-century English cookery books, tarragon most of all.