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Chicken Salad with Lemon & Olive
Take a can of boned chicken, remove the chicken from the can and put it in a bowl in the ice box several hours before you want to use it. When ready to make the salad, cut the chicken into dice, shred twice as much celery (that has been crisped and blanched in cold water and lemon juice) as you have chicken, marinate with nine tablespoonfuls of olive oil and three of vinegar seasoned with salt and pepper. Chill, and, when ready to serve, arrange lettuce leaves, in individual portions, on a platter, put a mound of the chicken and celery in the center with a tablespoonful of mayonnaise on top and a slice of stuffed olive.
A no-cook summer salad built around a can, from an era when the point of a July menu was to keep the stove cold. Two things need attention: the amount of dressing, and what the book means by "blanched."
- "Blanched in cold water"This is not the modern blanch in boiling water. Here it means soaking the shredded celery in cold, acidulated water to crisp it; drain it thoroughly and pat dry, or the dressing will slide off.
- Canned boned chickenA canned product of cooked meat packed in broth that sets to a jelly, still sold but much diminished. About a cup of diced poached or roast chicken breast and thigh — the yield of a typical can — gives a better result; chill it well so it dices cleanly rather than shredding.
- The marinade is a vinaigretteNine tablespoons oil to three vinegar is a standard 3:1, but twelve tablespoons total is three-quarters of a cup — generous for the amount of chicken and celery a single can produces. Toss, chill, then drain off what pools in the bowl before plating, or the mayonnaise will break down into a slick.
- Celery ratioTwice as much celery as chicken by volume makes this predominantly a celery salad, which likely reflects bulk, crunch and cheapness. Use the pale inner ribs; outer stalks are stringy and need peeling.
- Ice boxRead as refrigerator. "Several hours" of chilling is about texture and firming the meat, not safety; an hour is enough in a modern fridge, and the dressed salad should not sit out more than two hours once plated.
- Stuffed oliveA green olive stuffed with pimiento, the standard garnish of the period. Slice crosswise so the red shows.
- YieldThe recipe gives none; a single can of chicken with its celery makes a luncheon course for perhaps three or four. Salt at the end — canned chicken and olives both bring their own.
Chicken salad in the American sense — cold cooked poultry bound with mayonnaise and stretched with celery — was a fixture of luncheon and buffet menus from the late nineteenth century onward, and its invention is sometimes credited to a Delaware meat market in the 1860s, a claim more often repeated than documented. What dates this version is not the salad but the can. Cookbooks of the period built whole summer menus around shelf-stable protein and the ice box, on the reasoning that a hot kitchen was the real enemy of a hot day. The two-to-one celery ratio belongs to the same thinking, celery being cheap, cooling and available, and the pimiento-stuffed olive on top was a common signal that a plate had been composed rather than simply served.