Home › Seven Weeks' Menus › Spinach Salad No. 1
Spinach Salad No. 1
Wash thoroughly and boil one-half peck spinach. If it is young and tender cook in its own juices, heating it in saucepan very gradually to prevent burning. Cook 25 minutes or until tender. Old spinach is better cooked in boiling salted water. Allow one-half cup water to one peck spinach. When tender drain spinach and chop it with six hard cooked eggs. Add one cup toasted bread crumbs and one-half cup minced boiled ham. Pack in small cups or molds. Chill on ice and when ready to serve surround each mold on serving plate with olives and dress with mayonnaise.
A molded spinach-and-egg salad of the sort that filled the salad course in interwar menu books. The measures are in dry produce units and the cooking time belongs to an older idea of what cooked spinach should be.
- What half a peck of spinach isA peck is eight dry quarts. Loose spinach runs roughly 4 to 5 lb to the peck, so half a peck is about 2 to 2 1/2 lb of untrimmed leaves — several large bunches or bags. It cooks down to somewhere around 2 to 2 1/2 cups packed.
- Cut the cooking timeTwenty-five minutes turns spinach olive-drab and flat-tasting. Young leaves wilt in their clinging wash water in 2 to 3 minutes over medium heat; tough mature leaves need no more than 5 in boiling salted water. Since the spinach is chopped and molded afterward, nothing is lost by stopping early.
- The water quantityHalf a cup of water to a peck of leaves is barely a film — the recipe is really describing the wet-leaf method for both young and old spinach, with salt added for the older leaves. Use a wide pan with a lid and the water still clinging from washing.
- Drain hard, then drain againThis is the hinge. Press the cooked spinach in a sieve or twist it in a towel until it stops weeping, or the molds will slump and the mayonnaise will slide off. Chop it after squeezing, not before.
- Hard cooked eggsSix eggs to two pounds of raw spinach is a high ratio; they are the binder. Cook them 10 to 11 minutes from a simmer and cool them fully before chopping, so the yolks stay in pieces rather than smearing.
- Bread crumbsToasted crumbs here means dry crumbs from stale bread, browned in the oven — coarser than commercial fine crumbs and better at absorbing residual moisture. Panko is closer in texture than a canister of fine crumbs.
- Molding and chillingCustard cups, ramekins or teacups rinsed in cold water unmold most easily. Pack firmly, cover, and chill at least 2 hours; 'on ice' means the icebox, for which the refrigerator now stands in.
- YieldEnough for six to eight small molds as a salad course. Serve on chilled plates so the dressing and molds hold up.