Salads
Ir is not so many years ago that salads were considered a luxury only to be found on the tables of the wealthy; to-day a wider knowledge of cookery has taught the housewife who has to set a table with a small income that there is no more economical, wholesome dish than a well-made salad. She is beginning to realize, as the French do, that almost anything can be put into a salad, and that even cheap materials with a mayonnaise or a simple French dressing make a palatable as well as a cheap and most sightly dish. There are four essentials to a good salad; everything that goes into it must be ice cold, the green vegetable used must be perfectly clean and crisp, the ingredients of a mayonnaise must be properly proportioned and thoroughly blended and the salad materials should be well mixed just before the dish is served. If these rules are followed, a simple head of lettuce with a plain French dressing is a perfect dish.
No nicer way can be found to serve a vegetable salad than to bring the materials to the table crisp, fresh, and green, and dress it at the time it is to be served. For this purpose a large salad bowl, accompanied by a wooden knife and fork, and a small tray containing a cruet of oil and vinegar with pepper and salt, are a necessity.
For nearly every salad, lettuce is used as a base. If a whole head is not required at once, it may be kept fresh for several days. As soon as it comes from the market, sprinkle it and put it away tightly covered in the refrigerator. A good receptacle to keep for lettuce is a 5-pound lard pail with a tight lid. When required, clip off with shears the ragged, withered ends of the outside leaves, for often the portion nearest the stem is good enough to put into the base of the salad, to eke out quantity even if it is not to be eaten. Separate the rest of the leaves, wash thoroughly, and leave them for fifteen minutes to crisp in ice-cold water. Look over each leaf carefully in search of dirt or any of the insects that are to be found clinging to green stuff. Dry by shaking lightly in a wire basket, seeing that none of the leaves are bruised or broken.
Cold cooked vegetables or any leftover that is to be utilized in a salad, such as string beans, potatoes, or peas, are best if marinated for an hour or two before being used in a French dressing, leaving them in a cold place. If the salad is to be Macedoine, make a blend of various vegetables, marinate each one by itself, and only put together before sending to the table. Meat that is to go in a salad is much improved by standing for a short time in French dressing before using. Fish should be flaked or cut in neat cubes.
There is a strong prejudice among many people against oil. This is owing largely to the fact that sometimes one may have tasted a mayonnaise made of strong rancid oil. If you appreciate a salad, it pays to become a judge of good oil. Our California oils are now of the finest quality and are sold at a more moderate price than Italian oils. Good oil has a fresh, pleasant odor and a palegreen tinge. For people who really find the taste of oil obnoxious, there SALADS are various recipes for a boiled dressing in which butter takes the place of oil and makes very good salad. A cook can make a blend of boiled dressing with a tablespoonful oil mayonnaise in which it is almost impossible to detect any taste of oil. An excellent way is to make a pint of each dressing (if a salad comes to the table once each day, as it should) and keep them in the refrigerator tightly corked. Sometimes a few tablespoonfuls cream, whipped stiff, add a certain deliciousness to a mayonnaise that nothing else can give. It is especially nice where sour apples or celery are blended. Do not use "any old vinegar" in a salad; the best is none too fine; a colorless white-wine vinegar is required for any sort of mayonnaise.
During the summer, when all sorts of fresh green vegetables are abundant, it is a good plan while cooking what is to be used for dinner to double the amount needed and have something left for the next day's salad. This applies to such vegetables as green peas, string beans, cauliflower, turnips, carrots, new potatoes, spinach, asparagus, artichokes, beets, okra, or Brussels sprouts. In winter there need be no dearth of salads, for we have constantly with us cabbage, celery, and many of the boiled vegetables, as well as apples.
Every salad must be gently handled. It cannot be stirred as one would do when cooking a dish nor should it be molded or pattied. To break lettuce leaves makes them not only unsightly, but renders them tough. Pour the dressing over what ingredients are to be served in salad fashion, and toss with two forks till each particle is coated with mayonnaise or a French dressing, still not made mussy or broken. A variety of flavorings is a boon to the housewife who has not a great number of materials within her reach. Day by day even a plain potato or lettuce salad may be made a different dish by the use of some small addition as a flavor, such as chives or tiny pickled onions strewn over it, or make a difference in the seasoning, a mere hint of garlic one day, tarragon vinegar the next, or mint which can be added to a salad or two. The cook can make very cheaply for herself a num ber of flavored vinegars which will serve for a long time. To obtain ary flavor, put the herb desired in a bottle, cover with white-wine vinegar a b e a a, Mortar and Pestle; b, Double Boiler; c, Whisk for Beating Eggs; d. Ice-cream Mold; e, Po tato Masher; f, Handled Casserole, Individua Size. cork, and set the bottle in cold water, bringing it to a boil. Tarragon, cher vil, nasturtium, cucumber, sweet basil, chives, onion, celery, summer savory, garlic, or peppers can be used in this way.
Oil Mayonnaise.
Yolk 1 egg, 1 teaspoonful salt, 1 teaspoonful powdered sugar, 1 tablespoonful lemon juice, 1 cupful olive oil, 1 teaspoonful mustard, 1 tablespoonful vinegar, Dash McIlhenny's Tabasco Sauce Rub a bowl with the cut side of an onion, set in a pan of ice water, put in the dry ingredients and stir them together, then mix to a paste with a teaspoonful vinegar. Blend with the yolk of egg, stirring till perfectly smooth. Now, begin to put in the oil, a few drops at a time, beating constantly with a Dover egg beater. Alternate the oil with a little vinegar and lemon juice, until all ingredients have been used. When finished, the MRS. CURTIS'S COOKBOOK mayonnaise ought to be like a thick Catsup Cream Dressing. jelly.
The bulk of this entry is method rather than measurement, and most of it still holds. The two things that need translating are the equipment and the raw-yolk mayonnaise at the end.
- Yield of the mayonnaiseOne yolk and a cup of oil gives roughly a cup and a quarter of finished sauce, enough to dress salad for six to eight. Add the oil a few drops at a time at the start, as instructed, or the emulsion may break.
- Raw eggNothing in this dressing is cooked. Use pasteurized eggs or pasteurized yolks if it will be served to children, pregnant women, the elderly or anyone immunocompromised. Ignore the suggestion to make a pint and keep it corked in the refrigerator for days; homemade mayonnaise should be made in small amounts and used within about three days.
- Dover egg beaterA hand-cranked rotary beater. A balloon whisk does the same job, and a food processor or immersion blender does it faster — with a blender, put the yolk, seasonings, lemon juice and vinegar in first and stream the oil through the top.
- The bowl in ice waterWorth keeping. What matters most is that the egg and the oil be at the same temperature as each other before you start; fridge-cold oil against a room-temperature yolk is a common cause of curdling.
- Tabasco and the oilMcIlhenny's Tabasco is still made and widely sold. "Our California oils" refers to the California olive oil trade of the period; any fresh extra-virgin oil works, though a strongly grassy one will dominate. The pale-green tinge described is not a reliable test of quality — smell is.
- White-wine vinegarThe insistence on a colorless white-wine vinegar is about appearance: cider or red-wine vinegar tints the sauce. Champagne or plain white-wine vinegar keeps it ivory.
- Flavored vinegarsHerbs bottled in vinegar and warmed in a pan of water is not a preserving process by modern standards. The familiar garlic botulism warning applies to garlic held in oil rather than in vinegar, which is acidic, but home-made herb vinegars are still best kept in the refrigerator and used within a few months rather than "a long time."
- Keeping lettuceThe 5-pound lard pail is a lidded plastic tub. Wash, spin dry in a salad spinner rather than a wire basket, roll loosely in a damp towel and refrigerate. Fifteen minutes in ice water still revives limp leaves.
- Macedoine and marinatingA macedoine is a mixture of vegetables cut to uniform dice. Dressing cooked vegetables an hour or two ahead, each kind separately, genuinely improves them — potatoes and beans absorb dressing while still slightly warm, though beets will bleed into everything if combined early.
Salads of this kind belong to a specific moment in American cooking, when refrigeration, year-round market greens and cheap bottled oil put a dish that had been a rich household's course within reach of a modest one — which is exactly the argument the opening paragraph makes. The four rules given here (everything ice cold, greens crisp and clean, dressing properly emulsified, tossed at the last minute) are essentially the French service the author invokes, with the salad bowl and wooden servers brought to the table so nothing sits and wilts. Mayonnaise itself is generally traced to French kitchens of the eighteenth century, and its arrival as an everyday American dressing owes much to the hand-cranked rotary egg beater, sold in enormous numbers by the Dover Stamping Company from the 1870s onward and so ubiquitous that cookbooks simply wrote "a Dover egg beater" the way one now writes "a whisk." The aside about people who find oil obnoxious is a real period complaint: some cooks and diners had plainly met rancid oil, and the recipe takes that objection seriously.