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Italian Salad (Pile the white meat)
Pile the white meat of a chicken, picked from a cold one roasted, boiled, or fricasseed, in the centre of a dish, and shred a little lean ham to distribute equally amongst it. Veal also may be used, cut in very thin slices about the size of a quarter. Surround the meat with a wall of young crisp lettuces, small cress, or any salad vegetables in season. Boil some eggs hard, remove the yolks, and cut the whites into thin rings, which arrange in chains over the top. Pour over the centre any salad sauce, in which cream should predominate, and serve at once, that the salad may not get sodden.
A composed cold-chicken salad in the Victorian manner: meat mounded, greens banked around it, hard-boiled egg white laid over the top in rings, dressing added only at the last moment. Nothing here needs updating except the vagueness.
- Dress at the tableThe instruction to serve at once is the hinge. Cream dressing on cold poultry and tender lettuce collapses within minutes, so build the dish, chill it, and pour the sauce only as it goes out.
- QuantitiesThe breast meat of one 4 lb roast chicken, plus 2-3 oz of shredded lean ham, dresses a platter for four as a light main course or six as a first course.
- "About the size of a quarter"Most likely a coin comparison; a US quarter is just under an inch across, which would make these thin coin-sized slices rather than shreds. Either way the sense is small thin rounds. Cut across the grain from cold roast or braised veal.
- Small cressThis is garden cress or the seedling stage of it, sold now as cress or micro-cress. Watercress leaves, mache or young rocket stand in without changing the character of the dish.
- Egg-white chainsBoil the eggs 10 minutes, cool in cold water, halve, lift out the yolks and slice the whites crosswise into rings. Overlap the rings in curved lines so they read as a chain. The yolks are not used here; mash them into the dressing or keep them for another dish.
- Salad sauce with cream predominatingTypically a thin mayonnaise or a cooked boiled dressing loosened with a good deal of cream, tart with vinegar or lemon. Aim for a sauce that pours rather than sits, or it will not travel through the mound of meat.
- Cold cooked chickenWhatever the cooking method, cool the bird promptly and refrigerate it; do not leave a roasted chicken standing overnight at room temperature to become the "cold one" the recipe assumes.
Nineteenth-century English and American cookbooks used "Italian salad" loosely for any composed salad of cold cooked meat set among greens and masked with a creamy dressing, and the name is often linked to the French salade a l'italienne. Recipes of this type earned their place in household compilations because they solved the practical problem of the joint left over from Sunday, and cold roast fowl, sliced veal and a little lean ham recur in such platters.