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Lettuce and Green Pepper Salad
I crisp lettuce 2 chopped green peppers 2 tablespoonfuls chopped chives Vinegar and oil Salt and red pepper Shred the lettuce, put it into an earthenware bowl, sprinkle over the chopped green peppers and chopped chives, and dress with vinegar, oil and salt, and a dash of red pepper.
A plain shredded salad from a casserole-cookery book, given without proportions for the dressing. The only judgment calls are the head of lettuce and the ratio of oil to vinegar.
- "1 crisp lettuce"A single head; "crisp" suggests a firm variety rather than a soft-leaved one, but the book does not say which. A medium head shredded gives something in the region of 6 cups, enough for four small side servings.
- Dressing proportionsNone are given. A standard vinaigrette of three parts oil to one part vinegar is the safe default here; start with 3 tablespoons oil to 1 tablespoon vinegar for a single head and dress at the last moment, since shredded lettuce wilts fast.
- Red pepperIn cookbooks of this era "red pepper" ordinarily means ground cayenne, not paprika and not sweet red bell pepper. A dash is a pinch.
- Green peppersTwo whole peppers, chopped small; most cooks will want to remove seeds and ribs, though the recipe does not say so.
- ChivesTwo tablespoons chopped, a small bunch of fresh stems. Cut with scissors rather than a knife, which bruises them less.
- The earthenware bowlNo reason is given, but earthenware stays cool and does not react with vinegar. A glass or ceramic bowl does the same job; avoid bare aluminium or unlined copper, which will pick up a metallic taste from the acid.
- YieldFour as a side salad. It does not keep once dressed.
Casserole cookery was promoted heavily in American and British household books in the first decades of the twentieth century, when fireproof earthenware and the enamelled cast-iron pot became affordable to middle-class kitchens; books devoted to the method often carried a short salad chapter as well, on the reasoning that a heavy braised dish wanted something raw and sharp alongside it. That is the job this recipe is doing. The green pepper is the telling ingredient: sweet peppers moved from a curiosity to a common market vegetable in the United States over the later nineteenth century, and by the time books like this were written a raw chopped green pepper was an unremarkable way to add crunch and colour to a salad bowl. The instruction to use earthenware rather than metal is an entirely practical one, since vinegar attacks metal.