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Macédoine Salad
Put I boiled beet, 1 dozen boiled string beans, 2 tablespoonfuls of cooked green peas, ½ cup of boiled asparagus tops, I boiled carrot, I small onion, A root of celery, 1/2 pint of Mayonnaise dressing.
All the vegetables should be cut into proper sized pieces and mixed carefully together. They must also be perfectly free from moisture. Arrange neatly in a salad bowl, cover with Mayonnaise dressing and serve.
Lemon juice may be added. Vegetables can be purchased in bottles ready prepared for this salad. 3 good-sized potatoes, I salt-spoon of pepper,
A cold composed salad of separately cooked vegetables bound in mayonnaise. The technique matters more than the proportions: each vegetable is cooked to its own doneness, cooled, dried, and only then combined.
- Dry the vegetables, seriouslyThe instruction that everything be "perfectly free from moisture" is the hinge of the dish. Wet vegetables thin the mayonnaise into a grey slick within minutes. Drain, spread on a towel, and let them air-dry before dressing.
- Cook separately, not togetherBeet, carrot, celery root, beans, peas and asparagus all have different cooking times, and the beet will stain everything it touches. Boil or steam each on its own, then cool and dice; peel and dice the beet last, or fold it in at the table.
- Half a pint of mayonnaiseThat is one cup, which is generous for this quantity of vegetables. Start with half and add more until the pieces are coated rather than swimming. The lemon juice mentioned at the end is worth using; it lifts a salad that is otherwise rich and flat.
- Salt-spoonAn old measure of roughly a quarter teaspoon, from the small spoon kept in an open salt dish.
- "A root of celery"Celeriac, not stalk celery. Peel it thickly, cut into dice, and boil until just tender; it holds its shape well in a dressed salad. Stalk celery diced raw is an acceptable substitute for crunch, though the flavour is lighter.
- The raw onionOne small onion chopped raw will dominate a mild salad after an hour in mayonnaise. Mince it very fine, or soak the mince in cold water for ten minutes and drain.
- Bottled vegetablesThe note about vegetables sold ready-prepared in bottles refers to jarred macédoine mixes, once common in grocers. Frozen mixed peas and diced carrots, cooked briefly and cooled, are the modern equivalent and considerably better than tinned.
- Yield and servingEnough for four to six as a side salad. Dress no more than an hour ahead and keep refrigerated; the mayonnaise contains raw egg if made from scratch, so do not leave it standing at room temperature.
The name comes from the French macédoine, a mixture of vegetables or fruit cut in small even dice; the word is traditionally linked to the idea of Macedonia as a patchwork of peoples under Alexander, though this is a folk explanation rather than documented etymology. By the late nineteenth century the cut was familiar restaurant vocabulary, and cookbooks of this period treat a macédoine bound with mayonnaise as the respectable centre of a cold luncheon table, closely related to the Russian salad found on the same menus. The aside that the vegetables "can be purchased in bottles ready prepared" is a small window on the period: bottled and preserved produce was established enough to be offered as a shortcut to the cook working outside the growing season.