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Egg Salad
Boil six eggs fifteen minutes, when done throw into cold water and remove the shells. Then cut them in slices, arrange them on a bed of lettuce leaves so that one slice overlaps the other. Make a plain French dressing, add to it a tablespoonful of chopped chives and a tablespoonful of chopped parsley. Pour this over the salad, garnish with curly parsley and serve at once.
A plain composed salad that depends entirely on the eggs being cooked properly and the dressing being made fresh. Two details in the original are worth adjusting.
- Fifteen minutes is too longLarge eggs need about 10-11 minutes at a bare simmer for a fully set, still-tender yolk. Fifteen gives you a chalky yolk with a grey-green ring at the boundary, caused by iron sulphide forming where the whites meet the yolk.
- The cold water is not optionalPlunging the eggs into cold water the moment they come off the heat stops the carryover cooking and makes the shells release cleanly. Leave them there until cold, not just until handleable.
- "Plain French dressing"In books of this period this usually means oil and vinegar with salt and pepper, roughly three parts oil to one part vinegar, whisked to a temporary emulsion; such dressings were often made without mustard, garlic or sugar, though formulas vary. For six eggs, about 6 tablespoons oil to 2 of vinegar is ample.
- SlicingChilled eggs slice far more cleanly than warm ones, and a wetted thin blade or a wire egg slicer will keep the yolks from crumbling out of the rings.
- If you have no chivesThe finely sliced green tops of spring onions are the closest stand-in. Dried chives contribute nothing here; the point is the fresh onion note against the yolk.
- Serve at once means itDressed lettuce collapses within minutes and the vinegar will start to dull the surface of the whites. Assemble on the plates you intend to carry to the table.
- YieldSix eggs serve four as a first course or light lunch dish, or six as one item among several on a salad table.
Egg salads of this kind — sliced hard-boiled eggs laid on lettuce under a herbed vinaigrette — belong to the era of the composed salad, when a salad was arranged on a platter rather than tossed in a bowl. The style appears to owe something to late nineteenth-century French service as it was interpreted in American and British cookery schools, where "French dressing" generally meant oil and vinegar, in contrast to the thick boiled or mayonnaise-based dressings also current in English-speaking kitchens.