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Macedoine Salad
Cut into neat cubes one cold beet, one cold carrot, two cold potatoes and one cup of cold string beans. Put each vegetable separately into a sauce dish and marinate with a French dressing for a half hour, setting it in the refrigerator.
Serve arranged in small spoonfuls on individual lettuce leaves with a light mask of mayonnaise on each one and whole string beans as a garnish.
A composed salad of cooked vegetables, dressed separately so the beet does not bleed into everything else. That separation is the whole point of the dish.
- Marinate separately, alwaysThe beet will stain carrot, potato and beans pink within minutes if they share a bowl. Four small dishes, four spoonfuls of dressing, thirty minutes in the fridge, and the colors stay distinct on the plate.
- Cold vegetables means cookedThe vegetables are boiled and cooled before dicing, and cold cooked vegetables of this kind were often what was left from an earlier meal: beet and carrot boiled until tender, potatoes boiled and peeled, string beans cooked and drained. Cook them separately too, and cut the cubes small and even; the recipe asks only for 'neat cubes.'
- French dressing of the periodIn American books of this era this generally meant oil and vinegar with salt and pepper, whisked or shaken, in proportions of roughly two or three parts oil to one of vinegar; some versions also took mustard or paprika. Any plain vinaigrette works; keep it sharp, since the potato absorbs a good deal of it.
- A light mask of mayonnaise"Mask" means to coat thinly, not to spoon on a dollop. Thin the mayonnaise with a teaspoon of cream or a few drops of vinegar so it drapes over the vegetables rather than sitting on them.
- Drain before platingLift each vegetable out of its marinade with a fork and let it drain a moment. Loose dressing pooling under the lettuce will thin the mayonnaise and wilt the leaf.
- YieldThe quantities given would stretch to about four servings as a first course or side, one lettuce leaf apiece with a small spoonful of each vegetable, though the recipe states no number. Reserve the neatest whole beans for the garnish before cutting up the rest.
Macédoine is French kitchen vocabulary for a mixture of vegetables or fruit cut to uniform dice, and the name is generally traced to the mixed peoples of Macedonia under Alexander's empire, a joke about a jumble of nations in one territory. In nineteenth-century French cookery a macédoine could be served hot in butter, set in aspic, or dressed cold as here. Its appearance in an American housekeeping book of this era reflects two things at once: the prestige of French terms on the middle-class table, and the more practical business of turning yesterday's boiled vegetables into something that looked deliberate. The individual lettuce leaf and the thin coat of mayonnaise were the fashionable presentation of the day, when salads were increasingly plated per person rather than passed in a bowl.