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Asparagus Salad
I bundle of boiled asparagus, The rule for French dressing. Arrange the asparagus neatly on a flat dish, pour over it the French dressing and serve.
This is an exceedingly nice salad for lunch.
A two-line recipe that assumes you already know two things: how the book boils asparagus and what its French dressing is. Both need filling in.
- A bundle of asparagusAsparagus was sold in tied bundles, and the sizes reported vary; something on the order of 1 to 1.5 lb, roughly one modern supermarket bunch, is a workable equivalent. That serves three to four as a lunch salad.
- Boiled, but brieflyPeriod directions often call for boiling anywhere from about 15 to 30 minutes, which leaves the spears grey and collapsing. Salted boiling water for 3 to 5 minutes, depending on thickness, is enough; the spears should still hold their shape when lifted on a fork.
- Shock and dryFor a salad the stalks must be stopped in ice water and then dried thoroughly on a towel. Wet asparagus dilutes the dressing and it slides off into a puddle on the dish.
- The rule for French dressingIn books of this period the term generally means oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, simply stirred or shaken; the ratio varies from about two to four parts oil to one of vinegar, and some versions add mustard or paprika. Roughly 3 tablespoons oil to 1 tablespoon vinegar dresses one bunch.
- Dress at the last momentAcid turns green asparagus a dull olive within a quarter of an hour. Arrange the spears, pour the dressing as it goes to the table, and do not let it stand.
- Arranging neatlyIn practice this works out as laying the spears parallel with all tips facing one way, so each portion can be lifted whole with a fork and spoon. A flat dish rather than a bowl keeps them from breaking.
- Serving temperatureRoom temperature or barely cool eats better than fridge-cold, which mutes the oil. Trimming the woody ends before boiling, or peeling thick stalks, avoids stringy bases at the table.
Asparagus was an expensive, sharply seasonal luxury when this book was written, sold in tied bundles for a few weeks in spring, and a dish that showed off whole spears was a way of showing off the vegetable itself. Serving it cold under an oil-and-vinegar dressing rather than hot under melted butter or hollandaise is often said to be the French habit, and "French dressing" in American cookbooks of the period meant simply oil, vinegar and seasoning — the sweet, tomato-tinted bottled dressing that later took the name is a twentieth-century development. The recipe's brevity is characteristic of the genre: it cross-references the book's own rules for boiling and for dressing rather than repeating them.