Home › More Recipes › Lettuce with Russian Dressing
Lettuce with Russian Dressing
Use California lettuce if obtainable. Remove outside leaves and cut lettuce in halves and cut each half in two or four pieces according to the size of the head. Let stand in ice water until crisp. Place in cheesecloth on the ice or in a covered pail until needed. Serve on salad plates with Russian Dressing or with Thousand Island Dressing. Dressing may be passed separately if preferred.
This is an assembly instruction rather than a formula, and nearly all of it concerns keeping the lettuce cold and crisp between the icebox and the plate.
- "California lettuce"Almost certainly a crisphead type, the sort now sold as iceberg. Ice-packed rail cars had by the 1920s made western lettuce a national commodity, which is likely why a state is worth naming in a recipe. Any dense, tight head works; loose-leaf types collapse under a heavy dressing.
- The wedgeCutting through the core is deliberate: the core holds the wedge together on the plate. The recipe leaves the number of pieces to the size of the head — quarters for a large one, halves cut again for a smaller.
- Ice water soakThe recipe says only "until crisp"; twenty to thirty minutes is generally enough. A long soak waterlogs the leaves and dilutes any dressing that touches them. Drain cut side down on a towel before plating.
- "On the ice" storageAn icebox instruction. Wrap the drained wedges in a damp towel and refrigerate; the point is cold and humid without standing water. They hold a few hours, not overnight.
- Russian dressing, 1920s styleMayonnaise with chili sauce and often chopped pimento, hard egg or onion — not the sharper, horseradish-forward American deli version of later decades. Thousand Island is the same base with pickle relish.
- ServingA wedge per person as a luncheon salad, with dressing spooned over the cut face. Passing the dressing separately, as the book allows, keeps the lettuce from wilting on a buffet.
This comes from the era when a chilled wedge of crisphead lettuce was a modern, faintly luxurious thing to put in front of guests: refrigerated rail transport had made western lettuce available in eastern cities year-round. Russian dressing is generally traced to the early twentieth century, the name usually explained by an original garnish of caviar, though the versions printed in American cookbooks are mayonnaise thinned with chili sauce and studded with pimento. Thousand Island, its close relative, takes its name from the resort region of the upper St. Lawrence River. Both were new enough in this period that a book could offer them as the interesting part of the dish, with the lettuce itself needing no more instruction than how to keep it cold.