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Lettuce Salad (Cut the lettuce in quarters)
Cut the lettuce in quarters, from the bottom. Remove the leaves carefully without mashing or pressing them. Wash each leaf and dry it on a clean, soft towel; arrange them loosely in the salad-bowl. Sprinkle over chopped chives, parsley, or onion. Leave it on the ice until ready to serve; have the oil and vinegar brought to the table with it. Dust the salad with salt and pepper. Rub the spoon with garlic or onion, measure the oil, pour it over the lettuce, mix and toss with a salad fork and spoon until the oil is evenly distributed. Then pour over the vinegar, toss again, and serve.
A dressed-at-table green salad from the era before bottled dressing, built on one principle: oil first, vinegar second. The method still produces a better salad than a pre-mixed vinaigrette.
- Oil before vinegarThis is the hinge. Oil coats the dry leaves; vinegar added afterward tends to cling to the oil rather than soak into the leaf. Adding the vinegar first is generally held to wilt the leaves.
- ProportionsThe recipe says only "measure the oil," and gives no quantities. A common modern default is three parts oil to one part vinegar; on that basis, for a large head serving four, roughly 3 tablespoons oil and 1 tablespoon wine vinegar. Period recipes varied a good deal in this respect.
- The lettuce meant hereQuartering from the bottom to release whole leaves points to a firm head lettuce -- iceberg, or better, Boston or Bibb. Loose-leaf and romaine work but are torn rather than quartered.
- Dry the leaves completelyWater on the leaf keeps oil from adhering and dilutes the vinegar. A salad spinner does in seconds what the towel does here; either way the leaves should feel dry to the hand.
- "Leave it on the ice"The ice-box; a refrigerator now. The recipe sets no time, only "until ready to serve." Cold crisps the leaves; a loose damp towel over the bowl keeps the edges from drying out.
- Rubbing the spoonA cut garlic clove or onion drawn over the inside of the spoon leaves a trace of flavour without the raw bite of chopped garlic.
- Salt last, not earlySalt draws moisture from lettuce, so dust it on immediately before the oil goes in rather than while the salad waits on the ice.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; one good-sized head dressed this way would serve about four as a side salad.
Salad greens prepared in the kitchen and dressed at the table, with the oil and vinegar cruets carried out alongside, was a familiar nineteenth-century practice, and many books of this period do give the salad and the dressing as separate entries. Bottled and emulsified dressings largely displaced the habit in the twentieth century. The oil-then-vinegar sequence and the rubbing of the bowl or spoon with garlic rather than chopping it in are commonly attributed to French practice, and American cookbook writers of the late nineteenth century did often invoke French authority on green salads. Chives, parsley and onion would have been within reach of a kitchen garden.