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Artichoke Salad
Remove the artichoke bottoms from the can, let cold water run over them, drain and chill. When cold edge them with chopped cooked carrots and fill centers with cooked cold peas; put a tablespoonful of mayonnaise on top.
A composed salad of the assembly-not-cooking school: three cold components, one spoonful of dressing, no heat required. Almost all of the work is in the shopping and the chilling.
- Artichoke bottoms are not heartsThe recipe calls for the whole trimmed base of the artichoke, sold canned or jarred as fonds d'artichauts, sometimes found in Italian or French groceries. Marinated or quartered hearts are a different product and will not hold a filling; the bottom is a shallow cup, which is what lets it take the peas.
- The rinse mattersCanned artichokes are usually packed in an acidified brine that can read sharp or tinny against mayonnaise, which is presumably why the recipe has you run cold water over them. Drain them well afterward so the plate does not weep.
- Chill everything separatelyBottoms, carrots and peas should each be cold before assembly, and the plates cold too. Assemble shortly before serving; the mayonnaise will not hold its shape indefinitely.
- The peasThese were likely canned when the recipe was written, though the text does not say. Frozen peas, cooked two to three minutes and shocked in ice water, give better color and a firmer bite; they are the single easiest improvement.
- Carrot diceCut the cooked carrot small — about 1/8 inch — so the border reads as a band of color rather than a ring of chunks. Cooking whole and dicing after keeps the pieces from going waterlogged.
- SeasoningThe original assumes seasoned mayonnaise. A pinch of salt on the vegetables and a squeeze of lemon in the mayonnaise keeps the salad from tasting flat, since nothing else in it is assertive.
- Yield and servingOne filled bottom per person as a first course or part of a cold plate; two makes a light lunch. A leaf of lettuce underneath keeps the bottom from sliding on the plate.
This is hot-weather cookery, when the aim was to put something handsome on the table without lighting the stove — a genre that ran from aspics and jellied consommés to composed salads like this one. Its existence depends entirely on the can: artichoke bottoms and peas came out of tins, and the cook's contribution was rinsing, chilling and arranging. The garnish logic — a border of one color, a filling of another, a white dot on top — belongs to the simplified household version of French service often found in American cookbooks, where the artichoke bottom was treated as a ready-made edible container much as pastry barquettes were in professional kitchens.