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Lettuce and Potato Salad
I large crisp lettuce 1 cupful diced potatoes 2 onions Dressing Shred the lettuce till very fine and keep it in a cool place. Peel and cut raw potatoes into dice-shaped pieces and cook in boiling salted water with the onions.
Take out when done, remove the onions, pour over the potatoes while they are still hot a dressing of oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, and set them to cool.
IIO Place the sweetbreads in scalding water, salted, for fifteen minutes; then put into cold water to whiten and cool thoroughly. Boil for a quarter of an hour and remove all veins and skin. Set on ice, and when ready to use cut in small pieces and mix with the celery; put on lettuce leaves, sprinkle the lemon juice over, and cover with mayonnaise.
Scatter the capers over the mayonnaise.
A warm-dressed potato salad folded into finely shredded lettuce, in the French manner where the dressing goes on while the potatoes still steam.
- QuantitiesOne large head of crisp lettuce (romaine or iceberg both shred well) and one cupful, about 5-6 oz, of diced raw potato. The two onions are cooked with the potatoes and then lifted out and discarded; the recipe does not say how they are prepared, though they must stay intact enough to remove.
- The hinge: dress the potatoes hotHot potato absorbs oil and vinegar; cold potato sheds it. Drain and dress immediately, then let the dice cool in the dressing so they season through.
- Potato choiceA waxy variety holds its dice through boiling. Floury bakers will blur at the edges and break up when tossed.
- Cooking timeSmall dice in boiling salted water cook quickly, in the range of five to ten minutes. The recipe gives no time; test with a knife tip rather than by the clock.
- The dressingNo proportions are given; three parts oil to one of vinegar, with salt and pepper, suits this. A few tablespoons will dress a cupful of potato, since hot potato takes up more than cold.
- Keeping the lettuceShredding in advance and holding it cold is deliberate. Rinse, dry thoroughly, shred, and refrigerate in a covered bowl so it stays rigid against the dressed potato.
- Assembly and yieldThe recipe stops at cooling the dressed potatoes and does not say how or when the two elements are brought together; combine them late, as shredded lettuce wilts quickly against dressed potato. No yield is stated; the quantities suggest three or four as a side.
The technique here is older than the book: dressing potatoes while hot is the standard French method for salade de pommes de terre.