Martin Salad
Cook a two-pound slice of halibut with one onion cut in slices, four slices of carrot, two tablespoons vinegar, six cloves, bit of bay leaf, and four peppercorns, in water to cover, until tender. Chill, and marinate with French dressing. Cook four cups potato balls in boiling, salted water, with two slices onion and four cloves. When done, drain and cover with hot salad dressing. Marinate two cups each of French peas and flageolettes with a French dressing. Cut three tomatoes in slices, and marinate with French dressing.
When all these ingredients are thoroughly chilled, rub the salad dish with onion; lay slice of halibut in center; garnish with cream mayonnaise; arrange potatoes at either end of slice, and sprinkle with finely chopped parsley. Arrange a mound each of flageolettes and peas on either side of halibut; cover halibut with slices of tomato overlapping each other; garnish with the heart leaves of lettuce, arranged at intervals around the dish. Pass mayonnaise cream dressing.
A composed salad in the Victorian banquet style: every element cooked, marinated and chilled separately, then assembled on the platter at the last minute. Nothing here is difficult, but the timing only works if you treat it as four small jobs plus an assembly.
- The poaching liquid is a court bouillonOnion, carrot, vinegar, cloves, bay and peppercorns in water to cover is a classic aromatic broth for fish. Bring it to a bare simmer before the halibut goes in and keep it there; a rolling boil will break a two-pound slice apart.
- "Until tender" is far shorter than it soundsA thick centre-cut halibut steak needs only a short poach, on the order of ten minutes per inch of thickness at a slow simmer. Halibut is lean and turns dry and cottony quickly, so check it early; note that fish is usually advised to reach 145F internal, particularly here, where it is then chilled and held before serving.
- FlageolettesFlageolet beans, the pale green immature kidney bean, still sold dried or canned in French groceries. Two cups cooked is about three-quarters of a cup dried, soaked and simmered until tender but whole. Canned cannellini are the nearest easy substitute, though they are softer and blander.
- French peasPetits pois: small, sweet, shelled peas; imported canned French peas were widely available when the book was written, though the recipe does not specify them. Frozen petits pois, briefly boiled and cooled, are closer to the intent than anything in a tin today.
- Potato ballsCut with a large melon baller from peeled raw potatoes, or use small waxy new potatoes halved. Allow well over 2 lb of raw potatoes for four cups of balls, since scooping wastes a lot. Dress them while still hot so they absorb the dressing; cold potatoes take up almost nothing.
- Hot salad dressing vs. French dressingThe recipe does not define either. "Hot salad dressing" for the potatoes most likely means one of the era's cooked or boiled dressings, thickened and sharpened with vinegar; "French dressing" means a plain oil-and-vinegar mixture with salt and pepper, the proportions of which varied from roughly two to three parts oil to one of vinegar.
- Cream mayonnaiseMayonnaise lightened with whipped cream, folded in just before serving; the proportion varies widely from recipe to recipe. It slackens on standing, so make it last.
- Rubbing the dish with onionA cut onion drawn around the inside of the platter leaves a faint aromatic film, adding onion scent without any onion appearing in the finished arrangement.
- YieldAs written this serves six to eight as a lunch or first course. Assemble on a single large flat platter, not a bowl; the arrangement is the point and it collapses if it is piled.
Lowney's Cook Book (1907) was written by Maria Willett Howard for the Walter M. Lowney Company of Boston, a chocolate manufacturer — which explains the book's long chocolate section but not its extensive salad chapter, a reminder that these promotional cookbooks aimed to be complete household manuals and not merely advertisements. Elaborate composed fish salads like this one belonged to the era's formal luncheon table, where a salad was arranged rather than tossed, and its value lay in the symmetry of the platter: a center, garnishes at either end, mounds on either side, lettuce hearts at intervals. The name is unexplained in the book, as many such names are; salads of this period were routinely christened for a hostess, a hotel, or a customer, and the reference is generally lost. The technique's ancestry is easier to guess at than the name: marinating the vegetables separately in vinaigrette before assembly is often said to follow the method of the French salade russe and macédoine.