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Veal and Potato Salad
Take equal proportions of cold veal and boiled Irish potatoes. Shred the veal and cut up the potatoes. Season with a little butter or oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, celery, and mustard.--Mrs. R.
A leftovers dish written in the shorthand of a cook who already knew what she was doing. The quantities are left entirely to you, so the useful work is in the dressing and the handling of the cold meat.
- Irish potatoesIn Virginia cookbooks "Irish potato" simply distinguishes the white potato from the sweet potato, which was the default in that kitchen. Use any waxy boiling potato; it holds its shape after cutting where a russet will crumble.
- Veal, and what to use insteadMost likely the remains of a cold roast or braised veal, though the recipe does not say which cut. Cold roast pork loin, turkey breast or chicken thigh all behave much the same way in the bowl.
- Shred, do not diceThe original does distinguish shredding the veal from cutting the potatoes. Torn strands of meat tend to catch the dressing along their rough edges where a neat dice sheds it.
- CeleryAmbiguous in the original. Some period recipes mean the chopped stalk and some the seed, and either works here -- a cup of thinly sliced stalk for crunch, or half a teaspoon of seed for the flavour alone.
- The dressingIf you use butter, softened rather than melted works best, and it will set firm if the salad is refrigerated; oil is the easier choice unless you serve at room temperature. A workable ratio is three parts oil to one part cider vinegar with a teaspoon of prepared mustard for each half cup of oil.
- Dress the potatoes warmNot stated in the original, but a useful technique: toss the potatoes with the vinegar while they are still hot so they absorb it, then add the veal and the rest once cooled.
- Cold meat handlingCooked veal should have been refrigerated promptly and used within three or four days. Bring the finished salad back to cool room temperature before serving, and do not leave it standing out on a warm day.
- YieldTwo cups each of shredded veal and cut potato feeds four as a light main dish.
Meat-and-potato salads bound with an oil, vinegar and mustard dressing are often said to have been a way of using up Sunday's cold roast, in the days before refrigeration made leftovers easy to keep and dull to eat. Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, is a collection of contributions from named Virginia housekeepers, which is why so many entries end in an initial like "Mrs. R." — the book is a written record of what particular kitchens actually did, not a standardised manual, and the loose proportions here reflect a recipe passed between cooks who could be trusted to taste as they went. Veal was more common on the Southern table then than now, and the distinction between "Irish" and sweet potatoes was worth making in a region where the sweet potato was the everyday one.