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Summer Salad
Peel and slice very thin two good-sized cucumbers.
Trim and boil six artichokes. Prepare one root of celery by washing and cutting into small pieces. Slice one bunch or ten small red radishes. Mix the whole. them in a salad bowl, sprinkle with chopped Chervil; cover with French dressing and serve.
A plain French-style vegetable salad whose only difficulties are two vague ingredients: the artichokes and the "root of celery."
- Which artichokeSix boiled artichokes here most likely means globe artichokes, of which you use the tender bottoms and the heart, cut into pieces after cooking; the bare word could also cover Jerusalem artichokes. For globes: trim to the pale base, boil 20-30 minutes in acidulated water until a knife slides in easily, then cool before cutting. Two 14 oz cans of quartered artichoke hearts, drained and rinsed, are a reasonable substitute.
- Root of celeryThis is celeriac, not a head of stalk celery. Peel it thickly, then either cut it into fine matchsticks and use raw for crunch, or blanch the pieces two minutes to soften the raw-parsnip edge.
- French dressingHere this most likely means a simple vinaigrette, roughly three parts oil to one part vinegar with salt and pepper, whisked or shaken just before use, though recipes published under that name often added mustard, paprika or onion.
- Salting the cucumberSliced very thin, cucumber sheds water fast and will thin the dressing in the bowl. Salt the slices lightly, let them drain 15 minutes, and pat dry before mixing.
- ChervilChervil is delicate, faintly anise-scented, and sold fresh only sporadically. Use it raw and uncut until the last moment; if unavailable, a mix of flat parsley with a little tarragon is the closest stand-in. Dried chervil contributes nothing.
- Assembly orderDress and serve immediately. Cooked artichoke and celeriac hold up, but the radish and cucumber lose their snap within half an hour of meeting vinegar.
- YieldThe quantities given make a generous bowl for four to six as a side salad.
- A garbled lineThe sentence "Mix the whole. them in a salad bowl" is a typesetting error in the original. Read it as: mix everything, then turn it into a salad bowl.
Salads of this kind — several cooked and raw vegetables cut small, bound only in oil and vinegar and finished with a fresh herb — were one way American cookbooks gestured at French practice, at a time when "French dressing" often meant nothing more elaborate than vinaigrette. Chervil is one of the four fines herbes of French cooking and was grown in kitchen gardens more commonly than it is stocked in shops now. A composed summer salad like this one makes its own case: everything in it is at its best in the same few weeks of the year.