Italian Salad
I small head of cauliflower, 1/2 pint of asparagus tops boiled 1 dozen string beans 2 new potatoes ½ pint green peas 3 artichokes Boil the vegetables as carefully as possible. Separate the cauliflower into flowerets, cut the potato into fancy shapes, and cut the artichokes and beans into small pieces. Have ready, and cold, some aspic jelly. Pour a thin layer of the jelly in a plain mould, and stand it away to harden, then place vegetables cut into fancy and neat shapes, in the bottom of the mould, and down in the jelly; next garnish the side of the mould with the vegetables, dipped in a little of the jelly to make them stick. The mould should be placed in a pan of pounded ice. When ready to serve, fill the mould with the remainder of the vegetables. Wipe the outside of the mould with a warm towel, and turn it out onto its dish, and pour around a mayonnaise dressing seasoned with tarragon vinegar. Garnish with squares of aspic jelly.
A moulded macédoine of vegetables set in aspic, from the era when a dish came out of a pan of pounded ice rather than a refrigerator. The recipe assumes you already know how to make aspic and mayonnaise, and it leaves out the one thing that makes or breaks the mould.
- The hinge: more jelly than the recipe admits"Fill the mould with the remainder of the vegetables" only works if the vegetables are packed in liquid aspic, added in layers and allowed to set between them. Vegetables alone will not hold together, and the mould will collapse when turned out. Plan on roughly a pint to a pint and a half of aspic for every quart of mould capacity.
- Aspic jellyA clarified, well-seasoned stock set with gelatin — about 1 envelope (2¼ tsp) of powdered gelatin per cup of liquid for a mould firm enough to unmould and slice. Keep it liquid but barely warm when you pour it over vegetables.
- Volume measures for vegetablesA pint here is a US pint, 2 cups, measured as prepared vegetable rather than by weight. Half a pint of asparagus tops is about 4 oz trimmed; 1½ pints of peas is roughly a pound shelled, or a 1 lb bag of frozen.
- ArtichokesGlobe artichokes, trimmed down to the bottoms and hearts — three medium ones yield very little once the leaves and choke are gone. Canned or frozen artichoke hearts are a fair substitute and save half an hour.
- Boil "as carefully as possible"This means separately and briefly, each to its own doneness: peas and asparagus tips 2–3 minutes, beans 3–4, cauliflower florets 4–5, diced potato 8–10. Shock everything in ice water and dry it well, since surface moisture keeps aspic from clinging.
- Pounded iceCrushed ice packed around the mould was the period substitute for refrigeration. A refrigerator does the job; give each layer 20–30 minutes to set firm before adding the next.
- Turning outThe warm towel is right — a brief wipe, or a five-second dip in warm water, loosens the surface film without melting the shape. Invert onto a chilled platter.
- The dressingMayonnaise thinned to pouring consistency and sharpened with tarragon vinegar. Sauce the platter, not the mould, or the aspic clouds.
- YieldA large mould, 2 quarts or more given the quantity of vegetables; serves about 8 as a first course or a lunch salad.
Salade à l'italienne appears in nineteenth-century cookery as a macédoine of small-cut cooked vegetables, bound with mayonnaise or set in aspic and turned out of a mould, and overlaps with what English and American cooks called Russian salad. Before mechanical refrigeration, a summer table depended on ice, and a jellied salad was both a way of showing off a household's ice supply and a way of serving something substantial that had not been near a hot stove at dinnertime. The instruction to pack the mould in pounded ice, and to cut potatoes and vegetables into "fancy shapes" for the visible bottom and sides, belongs to the tradition of chilled moulded presentation common in genteel American entertaining in the later nineteenth century. Aspic itself was thrifty as well as decorative: the gelatin came from bones and calves' feet already in the kitchen, though packaged granulated gelatin was coming onto the market in this period and would gradually replace the long-simmered stock.