Celery Salad
2 boiled eggs. 1 raw egg. 2 tablespoonfuls melted butter, or 1 of oil. 1 tablespoonful sugar. 1 teaspoonful mustard. 1/2 teaspoonful salt. 1/2 teaspoonful pepper. 1/2 teacup vinegar.
Rub the yolks of eggs smooth, then add the oil, mustard, etc., the vinegar last. Cut the celery into pieces half an inch long. Set all in a cool place. Just before serving sprinkle over a little salt and black pepper, then pour over the dressing.
If you have any cold fowl, chicken, or turkey left from dinner, chop it up and mix it with some of the above-equal proportions of both-and it will make a delicious salad; or a few oysters left in the tureen will be a great addition to the celery salad.--Mrs. S. T.
A boiled-egg-yolk dressing of the type that preceded whisked mayonnaise in American kitchens, with the celery quantity left entirely to the cook.
- No celery quantity givenThe recipe assumes you are dressing whatever celery you have; the amount of dressing is fixed and the proportion of celery is left entirely to the cook.
- A teacup is not a measuring cupIn American books of this period a teacup runs about 3/4 cup, though usage varies and some writers mean 1/2 cup. Half a teacup of vinegar is therefore 6 tablespoons at most, which is sharp against two tablespoons of fat. Add it gradually and stop when the balance suits you.
- The raw eggThe single raw egg thickens and binds a dressing that is never cooked. If you are serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised, use a pasteurized egg.
- Method matters more than it looksRub the cooked yolks smooth first, as the recipe directs, then work in the fat and the mustard, and add the vinegar last, in a thin stream. Adding vinegar early tends to give a grainy, separated dressing.
- Melted butter or oilButter sets when chilled, so a dressing made with it will stiffen in a cool place and taste waxy. Oil is the better of the two options offered here unless you are dressing the salad the moment the butter goes in.
- MustardThe teaspoonful most likely means dry mustard powder rather than prepared mustard from a jar; prepared mustard brings its own vinegar and would thin the dressing.
- The leftovers variationEqual parts chopped cold chicken or turkey and celery makes what later cookbooks would simply call chicken salad. Cold cooked poultry should have been refrigerated promptly and used within three or four days.
- OystersOysters "left in the tureen" means already cooked in a stew. Drain them well and fold in at the last minute, as they shed liquid and will slacken the dressing.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree, gathered its recipes from named and initialled contributors across the state, which is why this one ends with "Mrs. S. T." rather than a house style. Celery was a cold-weather luxury in the nineteenth-century American garden, blanched by banking soil or boards against the stalks and stored in sand through the winter, which is why it turns up so often in Christmas and holiday menus and in salads meant to use up the cold fowl from the day before. The dressing itself belongs to the older tradition of pounding hard-boiled yolks smooth with mustard and vinegar, a technique generally traced back to English and French salad sauces and one that survived in American books well after whisked oil mayonnaise became fashionable.