Macedon
or in French MACÉDOINE, is a name which is supposed to have been used in the first instance to signify a medley of vegetables, but which has so pleased the French ear that it has been applied to almost any kind of medley. It would not be classical, but it would be unimpeachable, to translate The Princess: a Medley, into La Princesse: une Macédoine. The French are at a loss to account for this locution, which they have themselves invented, and can only suggest, one after another, that it must have had its rise in the fact that the Macedonian Empire was a medley of many strange nations and races, and that its name therefore was appropriate in the first instance to a mixture of vegetables, and afterwards to any mixture remarkable for its variety. The explanation is characteristic of our friends across the water, and is even worthy of Ménage.
Macedon Under the name of Alexander it has been already explained that in France, in the middle of the seventeenth century, a Macedon was the parsley of Macedon, which in England was known as the Alexander. At the same time this plant was being fast displaced by the celery, which the Italians brought to perfection; so that early in the last century it was of little or no account, and the name of Macedon became disengaged. It was given to a medley of vegetables, not because they were a medley, but because they were, so to speak, fricasséed that is, cut to pieces and served with a white fricassee sauce. What is the connection? Alexander the Great was supposed to have brought haricots from India, and was said to have liked them fricasséed at least, that is the expressive word used by the Marquis de Cussy (L'Art Culinaire, chap. viii.), who has preserved the tradition, though without being very sure of his classical authorities. Add to the haricots a variety of other vegetables; fricassee all together in the fashion approved by the great Alexander-and what could be more natural than to name the dish either Légumes à l'Alexandre, or Légumes à la Macédoine? In point of fact, the Macedon, as at first created, was just such a dish; and it still survives as the standard form of the Macedon. In course of time, it was forgotten that the name of Macedon was given to the vegetables on account of the (supposed) Macedonian method of serving them, and popular imagination fixed upon variety as the most notable mark of the dish. The name of Macedon came thus to be transferred from the mode of cooking the vegetables to their great variety; afterwards it was applied to a variety of fruits, and now it is used as a playful synonym for mélange.
Macedon of Vegetables. - This is the Alexandrian or Macedonian fricassee as imagined by the French cooks, and transferred from the haricots, which the great commander loved, to a medley of vegetables. Choose Mackerel the most delicate vegetables-haricot pods, haricot beans, peas, asparagus, carrots and turnips. Shape the carrots and turnips into peas and dice; cut the haricot pods into little lozenges; take the asparagus points. Whatever the vegetables chosen, boil them separately in salt and abundance of water. Then drain them well and put them together in a stewpan to stir on the fire (but not so as to mash them), with a good piece of butter, a slight dredging of flour, some powdered sugar, salt, and a spoonful or two of broth. After a few minutes' simmering in this way, finish them either with some spoonfuls of Béchamel, or with a leason of yolks and cream.
Salad of Macedon. -Choose, cut, boil and drain the vegetables as before. Serve them either in one heap, indiscriminately mixed together, or arrange them ornamentally in separate heaps. Cruet sauce. Macedon of Fruits. - A variety of fruits embedded in a mould of jelly.
Beneath the etymological digression are three workable recipes: a buttered vegetable fricassee, the same vegetables dressed cold, and a fruit jelly. The vegetable macédoine is the one worth cooking, and it hinges on cooking each vegetable separately.
- Cook each vegetable apartThe instruction to boil them separately in plenty of salted water is the whole technique, not fussiness. Carrots, turnips, beans, peas and asparagus all reach their point at different moments, and cooking them together gives you either grey beans or raw carrot. Drain each and refresh in cold water if you are holding them.
- Haricot pods and haricot beansTwo different things here: haricot pods are green beans, cut into small lozenges on the diagonal; haricot beans are the shelled fresh (or dried and soaked) white beans. Modern shops make flageolets or cannellini the easy substitute for the latter.
- "Shape the carrots and turnips into peas and dice"A small melon baller gives the pea shapes, or cut into a neat 5 mm dice. The point is that every element ends up roughly pea-sized so a spoonful carries all of them.
- "A leason of yolks and cream"A liaison: two or three yolks beaten with a few tablespoons of cream, slackened with a little of the hot cooking liquor, then stirred in off the direct heat. It must not boil after the yolks go in or it will curdle. The béchamel option is the more forgiving of the two.
- The sugar"Some powdered sugar" here means a pinch of caster or icing sugar to lift the vegetables, not a sweetening. A quarter-teaspoon for four servings is ample.
- Cruet sauceFor the cold salad this simply means oil, vinegar, salt and pepper from the table cruet, mixed to taste — a plain vinaigrette. The vegetables should be cold and thoroughly drained or the dressing will slide off into a puddle.
- Macedon of fruitsThe one line given assumes you know how to line a mould with jelly, set the fruit in layers as each sets, and turn it out. Modern gelatine is standardised: follow the packet, and avoid fresh pineapple, kiwi and papaya, whose enzymes prevent gelatine setting.
- QuantityNo yield is given. About 1 kg of prepared vegetables in total, with 50 g butter, a scant tablespoon of flour and the "spoonful or two" of broth the recipe calls for (say 2 tablespoons), serves four to six as a side.
Kettner's Book of the Table (1877), written by the journalist E. S. Dallas around the name of the Soho restaurateur Auguste Kettner, is as much a dictionary of culinary opinion as a cookbook, and this entry shows the habit at full stretch: a page of speculative etymology attached to about six lines of actual cooking. The plant Dallas calls the parsley of Macedon is alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum), a strong-flavoured umbellifer grown in English and French gardens for centuries and genuinely displaced by cultivated celery during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — that part is well documented. The rest, the chain from Alexander the Great's supposed fondness for fricasséed haricots through to the name macédoine, is Dallas repeating a tradition from the Marquis de Cussy and admitting as much. The likelier explanation is the one he dismisses: French writers from the eighteenth century onward simply used Macedonia as a byword for a patchwork of peoples, and the word for a mixed dish followed. What survives from the entry is the dish itself, which remained a fixture of French garnishing well into the twentieth century and eventually gave its name to the tinned mixed vegetables sold as macédoine to this day.