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Triple Salad
6 slices cooked beets 4 slices Spanish onion 4 short asparagus tips Place lettuce leaf on individual salad plates. On this, arrange 2 rows of the beets and onion, laying 3 slices of the beets in each row and slipping the slices of onion in between the beet slices, alternating them. On top, in slightly spreading fan shape, place the asparagus tips. Pour French dressing over the vegetables, serve very cold.
A composed salad rather than a tossed one, so the assembly is the whole point. Everything should be cold and dry before it goes on the plate.
- Yield is unclearThe quantities given (6 beet slices, 4 onion slices, 4 asparagus tips) build one plate as described \two the top layer of asparagus, yet the instruction says "individual salad plates." Read it as a single portion and multiply, or split the beets into two plates of one row each.
- BeetsWhole beets boiled or roasted until tender, cooled, peeled and cut into even rounds about 1/4 inch thick. Canned sliced beets also work; drain and blot them well.
- Keep the beets from bleedingThis is the hinge. Dress the beet slices separately in a little of the French dressing, let them drain, and blot the surface before laying them on the lettuce, or the plate turns uniformly pink within minutes.
- Spanish onionThe large mild yellow onion, not a red one. Slice it paper thin; if it still bites, soak the slices in ice water for ten minutes and dry them thoroughly.
- Asparagus tips"Short tips" probably means the top two or three inches. Fresh tips need two to three minutes in boiling salted water and an immediate plunge into ice water, or they go limp under the dressing. Canned tips need only draining and chilling.
- French dressing of the eraIn American books of this period French dressing generally meant a plain shaken vinaigrette -- commonly around three parts oil to one part vinegar with salt, pepper and often a little paprika -- not the sweet orange bottled kind. The recipe simply says to pour it over the vegetables; dress them just before serving.
- ServingChill the plates themselves. Assembled salads of this type collapse quickly, so build them no more than a few minutes before they go out.