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Pepper and Salt (Half a teaspoonful of made)
Half a teaspoonful of made Mustard.
One teaspoonful of Castor Sugar. (Cold boiled vegetables can be used as well, such as Potato, Carrot, Turnip, Cauliflower, etc.) Wash all the ingredients carefully to remove dirt and grit. Dry them well in a clean cloth; break up the leaves into small pieces and put them into the salad-bowl; do not use a knife to the green vegetables. Put the salt, sugar, and mustard into a tablespoon; fill it with tarragon vinegar, and stir to melt the salt and sugar and mix the mustard. Pour this over the salad, shake over some pepper, and add the oil last, mixing all well together. Remember the old saying in making a salad, "The vinegar should be measured out by a miser, the oil by a spendthrift, and a maniac should mix it."
Pommes de Terre à l'Anna, Ingredients.
Two pounds of Potatoes.
Two ounces of grated Cheese.
One and a half ounce of Butter.
This is a plain French dressing built directly in the salad bowl, and the page as printed is a fragment: the head of the ingredient list (the salt, pepper, oil and greens) has been lost, and the tail runs straight into the opening of an unrelated potato dish. What survives is still workable if you treat it as a method rather than a formula.
- What is missingThe head of the ingredient list is lost: the oil and the salad greens themselves are named only in the instructions, though salt and pepper survive in the page heading. The quantities of salt, vinegar and oil have to be judged rather than read off, and whatever salt is used must still leave room in the tablespoon for the vinegar.
- Made mustard"Made" mustard means prepared mustard from the jar, not mustard powder. An English mustard is the closest match to what the book intends; Dijon works and is milder.
- Castor sugarSuperfine sugar. It is specified because it dissolves in the spoonful of vinegar before the oil goes in; ordinary granulated will do if you stir a little longer.
- The tablespoon as measureThe dressing is mixed in a tablespoon, so the vinegar amounts to a tablespoon's worth less the volume of the salt, sugar and mustard already in it. That is the whole quantity of acid for the bowl, which is why the proportion of oil is left to judgement.
- The ratioThe old saying quoted at the end is the actual instruction: measure vinegar meanly and oil freely. Three to four parts oil to one of vinegar is the sense of it. Use a mild olive or a neutral oil; a strongly peppery oil will fight the tarragon.
- Tarragon vinegarStill sold, and easy to make by steeping fresh tarragon in white wine vinegar for a week or two. White wine vinegar alone is an acceptable substitute, though the anise note is the point of the dressing.
- No knife to the greensVictorian and Edwardian cookery held that steel blades discoloured salad leaves, which was true of the carbon-steel knives of the day. Stainless steel does no harm, but tearing still bruises less than a dull blade.
- Dress at the last momentLeaves must be bone dry or the oil will not cling and the dressing pools at the bottom. Add the oil last, as directed, and toss immediately before the salad goes to table.
- The stray potato headingThe closing lines belong to Pommes de Terre a l'Anna, a separate recipe, and are no part of this salad. Ignore them here.
The maxim about the miser, the spendthrift and the maniac is a familiar piece of kitchen doggerel in nineteenth-century English cookery writing, usually given in a longer four-part form that also calls for a counsellor to add the salt. It is generally traced to a Spanish or Italian proverb, and English cookbooks from the mid-1800s onward repeat it, often without attribution, as shorthand for the whole technique of dressing a salad: little acid, plenty of oil, and vigorous mixing. Its presence here reflects the period's view of salad as a French accomplishment rather than an English one. The permission to use cold boiled potato, carrot, turnip and cauliflower is equally of its time, when the cold remains of yesterday's vegetables might be worked into a dressed salad rather than thrown out.