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Vegetables, or Légumes, and Salads. 157
Salade à l'Anglaise - lettuce, celery, beetroot, endive, etc., with oil and vinegar. à l'Allemande-slices of potatoes, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and celery, with oil, vinegar, etc. à l'Italienne-several kinds of salad and vegetables, with meat or fish, anchovies, olives, etc., and Tartare sauce. à l'Indienne-lettuce and mustard and cress, with a sauce of claret with chutney, vinegar and spice; in a border of plovers' eggs, or hardboiled eggs cut in halves. It may be garnished with curried shrimps and slices of lemon, and is served with brown bread and butter. à la Flamande-Dutch herrings, or any dried fish, pickled shrimps, apples, beetroot, potatoes, etc., with oil and vinegar. à l'Espagnole-a border of slices of tomatoes, and pickled onions with Mayonnaise sauce in the centre. à la Russe-carrots, parsnips and beetroot cut in shapes, pieces of fowl or game, anchovies, olives, caviar, etc., with oil, vinegar and mustard. Another form of Russian salad is a mould of vegetables with yolks of eggs, cream, purée of spinach, etc. à la Suède-pickled herrings, beef, apples and potatoes, cut in dice, with chopped herbs, gherkins and capers, oil and vinegar; garnished with anchovies and olives.
Salade à la Vienne-lettuce with shreds of ham, tarragon and chervil, oil and vinegar, etc. à l'Anvers lettuce with shreds of chicken, ham and capsicums, in a Mayonnaise sauce with curry powder, garnished with slices of potatoes. à la Napolitaine-a border of slices of hard-boiled eggs and Bologna sausage, and a salad with Tartare sauce in the centre. à la Rachel-shreds of celery and hard-boiled whites of eggs, in Tartare sauce with chopped herbs; garnished with the yolks of eggs and sausages cut in slices. This is sometimes called à la Reine. à la Cazanova-dice of ham and fish, with celery, hard-boiled whites of eggs, etc. Mayonnaise sauce with powdered yolks of eggs. à la Tartare lettuce, with pickled cucumbers, onions, etc., herrings cut in dice, oil and vinegar. à la Demidoff-slices of potatoes and truffles, with oil and vinegar, young onions, etc. à Madame-lettuce, with sauce of oil, vinegar, yolk of egg, etc. à l'Adeline-salsifis with Mayonnaise sauce, in a border of tomato mayonnaise with aspic; garnished with strips of cucumber and tomato. d'Estrées endive and celery in Mayonnaise sauce, with a border of slices of potato and beetroot. à la Pompadour-pieces of cauliflower in Mayonnaise sauce with cheese, in a border of slices of potatoes, carrots and leeks. Savoury cream sauce.
Salade à la Jardinière-fine strips of vegetables, with oil, vinegar, etc.
Cerises à la vinaigrette is composed of stoned cherries, fillets of anchovies, young onions, chopped bacon, etc., with oil, vinegar, mustard and spice.
Mayonnaise à la Macédoine, or à la Jardinière, is composed of mixed vegetables with Mayonnaise sauce.
Mayonnaise à la Bretonne-shreds of lettuce and of fish, with anchovies and olives, and green Mayonnaise sauce.
Mayonnaise de tomates à l'aspic-chopped tomatoes with Mayonnaise sauce in a border of aspic; garnished with tarragon and olives.
Mayonnaise de tomates à la Couronne chopped tomatoes in Mayonnaise sauce with aspic, set in little paper cases.
Salade à la Duchesse de Fife is a mould of tomato purée with aspic and Mayonnaise sauce, decorated with hard-boiled egg, and served with salad.
Timbale à la Macédoine is a mould of aspic, decorated with egg, and filled with a vegetable Macedoine in Mayonnaise sauce.
Petites crèmes à la Jardinière are little moulds of mixed vegetables in Mayonnaise sauce with aspic.
Chartreuse de légumes is an ornamental mould of mixed vegetables, filled with chopped vegetables stewed in brown sauce.
Kari de légumes is a curry of vegetables. It may be served hot or cold.
Crêpes à la Jardinière are pancakes made with chopped vegetables. Crêpes aux fines herbes are made with chopped herbs.
Purée de légumes à la Romaine is a purée of mixed vegetables, garnished with little moulds of cheese custard breadcrumbed and fried. (161)
Forty-odd composed cold dishes, and the first thing to grasp is that in this book a Mayonnaise is a dish rather than a sauce. Mayonnaise de homard and Mayonnaise de tomates are named salads that happen to be dressed with it.
- Salad meant composedNothing here is a bowl of leaves. Every entry is a built thing — a border of one ingredient, a centre of another, a garnish laid over the top. The arrangement is the recipe, and reading these as ingredient lists loses the dish entirely.
- Plovers’ eggsListed as a border for the Indian salad. Wild birds’ eggs are protected by law in Britain and in the United States and cannot be bought or taken. Quail eggs are what the trade now sells for the same purpose and are the right size for it.
- Russian saladThe survivor, and the page gives both of its forms: diced root vegetables under a dressing, and a mould of vegetables bound with yolks, cream and purée of spinach. The elaborate one disappeared with the moulds; the plain one went on into the delicatessen tub.
- AspicA dozen of these dishes are set in jelly — clarified stock with enough gelatine to hold a shape. It was doing two jobs, holding the arrangement still and sealing the cut surfaces of fish and meat, and the second job is why these belong on a properly cold table and have to stay there.
- The condiment shelfChutney, Indian pickles, curry powder, claret in a dressing, capsicums, Bologna sausage, caviar. The foreign salads on this page are assembled almost entirely out of imported bottled and tinned goods rather than out of foreign technique.
- Cerises à la vinaigretteStoned cherries with anchovy, young onions, chopped bacon, oil, vinegar, mustard and spice. It is the strangest line on the page and the one most worth making: salt and fat and sharpness against sweet fruit is a combination modern cooking arrived at again from a quite different direction.
This is the food of the meal nobody sits down to. A salad in this chapter carries fish, fowl, game, herring, beef, sausage or egg; it is substantial, it is cold, it is built to be looked at, and it has to survive standing on a table for an hour or two without collapsing or going warm. That describes the ball supper, the garden party, the cold luncheon and the wedding breakfast rather than the dinner the rest of the book is about, and it explains the aspic: jelly is what holds an arrangement upright and intact while a room full of people helps itself piecemeal. The run of national names across the page — Anglaise, Allemande, Italienne, Indienne, Flamande, Espagnole, Russe, Suède, Vienne, Anvers, Napolitaine — is doing the same work for a buffet that a menu card did for a dinner, telling guests which dish is which when there is no servant beside the table to tell them.