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Lettuce Salad (German Recipe Prepare large)
A German Recipe Prepare 2 large lettuces. Wash, drain, and shred them finely, and put them into the salad bowl. Cut 4 ounces of bacon into dice, fry these with a finely minced onion for five or six minutes, and shake the pan over the fire to prevent them browning. Add to the bacon a little salt (the amount will depend upon the quality of the bacon), 1/2 teaspoonful of pepper, and 1 table-spoonful of vinegar; pour all over the lettuce, and mix thoroughly.
A hot bacon dressing poured over shredded lettuce -- the ancestor of what American cookbooks later called wilted lettuce salad. It comes together in the time the bacon takes to render, so have the lettuce shredded and waiting in the bowl.
- The hinge: pour it hotThe fat, vinegar and onion must go over the lettuce while still sizzling, and the salad must be tossed and served at once. Dressing that has cooled leaves greasy streaks instead of lightly collapsing the leaves.
- Don't brown the bacon"Shake the pan over the fire to prevent them browning" means render the dice gently, over a low to moderate heat, until the fat runs and the cubes are soft and still pale, not crisp. Browned bacon and scorched onion turn the dressing bitter.
- Two lettucesA period "large lettuce" would most likely have been a loose head of butterhead or cos rather than anything as dense as a modern iceberg. Romaine, or a mix of romaine and leaf lettuce, is probably closest; iceberg is watery and bagged mixes are too delicate to stand up to hot fat.
- The pepper is heavy-handedHalf a teaspoon of pepper over two heads of lettuce is assertive by current taste. A quarter teaspoon, freshly ground, is a reasonable starting point with more at the table.
- The vinegar is lightOne tablespoon against 4 oz of bacon and its rendered fat gives a very rich, barely sharp dressing. Two to three tablespoons of cider or white wine vinegar would suit most modern palates better; the recipe adds it to the pan, so keep the heat low so it does not boil away.
- SaltThe caution about "the quality of the bacon" still holds, more so now: much supermarket bacon is wet-cured or brine-injected and salty enough that the salad may need little or none. Taste the dressing in the pan before it goes over the greens.
- Yield and servingEnough for about four as a side, though the recipe gives no yield. It will not keep -- the leaves go limp and watery quickly, so dress it as close to serving as you can.
History: This belongs to the family of German leaf salads dressed with hot bacon fat -- a dish built on the household logic that rendered pork fat sharpened with vinegar is a dressing in its own right, no oil required. Versions appear across German-speaking Europe, and a closely related formula, often with a spoonful of sugar or a beaten egg stirred in to thicken it, is the wilted lettuce salad of Pennsylvania Dutch and Appalachian kitchens. Its appearance in an English-language compilation labelled simply "A German Recipe" reflects a common habit of tagging salads by nationality, at a time when salad in the English tradition still generally meant greens under oil and vinegar.