Egg Salad
In the spring a pleasant change is made by slicing hard-boiled eggs on lettuce leaves and serving with a boiled dressing.
A one-line recipe that assumes you already know how to make a boiled dressing, which is the only real work involved. Everything else is assembly.
- Boiled dressingA cooked dressing common in American kitchens of the period: egg yolks, vinegar, a little sugar and mustard, sometimes flour or cream, cooked gently over water until it thickens like a thin custard. It is not boiled in the literal sense; take it off the heat the moment it coats a spoon, or the yolks scramble. Chill it before it meets the lettuce.
- EggsTwelve minutes in barely simmering water, then straight into cold water, gives a set yolk without the grey ring and the sulphurous smell. Peel and slice while cold, using a wet knife or an egg slicer so the yolks stay whole.
- Seasoning the eggs themselvesThe original leaves them bare. Salt and pepper the sliced eggs directly, lightly, before dressing; the dressing alone will not season them through.
- LettuceIn 1911 this most likely meant a soft-headed garden lettuce rather than the crisp heads that later dominated. Butter or Boston leaves, kept whole as cups, are the closest thing and hold the dressing better than crisp ribs.
- Assembly orderDress at the table or immediately before serving. A cooked dressing is heavier than vinaigrette and will collapse tender lettuce within a few minutes.
- YieldFigure one to two eggs and two or three leaves per person, with about a tablespoon of dressing each. As written it is a side salad or a light lunch course, not a main dish.
Rufus Estes published Good Things to Eat in 1911, having been born into slavery in Tennessee and gone on to cook for Pullman private cars and later for the subsidiaries of United States Steel. The brevity here is characteristic of the book's salad chapter, which was written for cooks who already knew the standard preparations and needed only the idea. Boiled dressing, the thickened cooked-yolk sauce assumed in the last clause, was the ordinary American salad dressing of the period: commercial mayonnaise did not become a pantry staple until the 1910s and 1920s, and cooked dressings kept better and stretched further in a kitchen without reliable refrigeration. The seasonal framing is also period-accurate rather than decorative, since spring was when garden lettuce and abundant eggs arrived together, and both had been scarce through the winter.