Spinach Salad
Mix two cups cold, cooked, and seasoned spinach, with four hard-cooked eggs, finely chopped. Press into timbale molds; chill; remove; arrange in nests of lettuce; cover with French dressing.
Garnish top and edge of salad with egg, arranged like daisies. Pass cream or mayonnaise dressing with this salad.
A molded salad of the sort that filled the salad chapters of American cookbooks around 1900, when a dish's shape mattered as much as its flavor. The whole thing succeeds or fails on how dry the spinach is.
- Squeeze the spinach hardThis is the hinge. Cooked spinach holds an enormous amount of water, and wet spinach will never hold a molded shape. Wring it in a towel or press it in a sieve until no more liquid comes out, then chop it fine and season with salt, pepper and a little butter or oil before molding.
- Timbale moldsSmall straight-sided cups of about 1/3 to 1/2 cup capacity, originally tinned metal. Ramekins, teacups, or a muffin tin all work. Line them with plastic wrap so the chilled molds lift out cleanly instead of being coaxed out with a knife.
- Quantities and yieldTwo cups of cooked spinach means two cups after cooking and draining, which takes roughly two pounds of raw leaf spinach. With four eggs this fills six to eight small timbales, enough for four to six as a first course.
- Hold back some eggThe recipe chops four hard-cooked eggs into the mixture and then garnishes with egg, without saying whether the garnish egg is extra. Either cook a fifth or reserve one before mixing: sieved yolk for the daisy centers, white cut into petal strips for the rays.
- Chilling timeAn hour in the refrigerator is the minimum for the molds to set enough to unmold; two is safer.
- French dressing, then and nowAt this date that generally means a simple oil-and-vinegar dressing with salt and pepper, sometimes a little paprika, whisked fresh; proportions varied from cook to cook. Nothing creamy or sweetened; the cream or mayonnaise dressing is passed separately, as the last line says.
- Dress at the tableVinaigrette poured over the molds early will slump them and darken the lettuce. Unmold onto the lettuce, garnish, and add the dressing just before serving.
Lowney's Cook Book was published in 1907 for the Walter M. Lowney Company, the Boston chocolate manufacturer, and it surrounded its chocolate and cocoa formulas with a complete general household repertoire. The salad chapter belongs to a period when a course was judged largely on presentation: cooked vegetables were pressed into timbale, dariole or border molds, turned out cold, set in a lettuce nest and finished with a decorative garnish, here hard-cooked egg cut into daisies. A molded shape made a small quantity into a formal dish. Here a plain French dressing goes over the salad and a cream or mayonnaise dressing is passed separately, leaving the choice of richness to the diner.