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Tuna Fish Salad Supreme
1/2 cup of cooked macaroni or spaghetti 1/2 cup of canned tuna fish 1/2 cup cooked sauerkraut 1/4 cup cooked carrots, diced 1/4 cup celery, chopped 1/4 teaspoon onion, minced few grains white pepper 1/2 teaspoon green pepper, chopped 1/4 tablespoon sweet red pepper, chopped 1/4 cup diced cheese 1/4 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons relish 4 tablespoons mayonnaise Cook macaroni or spaghetti in boiling salted water until tender. Drain, and chill. Shortly before serving combine all the other ingredients, together lightly with a fork. Serve on lettuce leaf and garnish with extra mayonnaise if desired.
A small composed salad built from leftovers, in the deliberately eclectic style of 1930s "modernistic" cookery. The quantities are odd but internally consistent; the only real technique is keeping everything cold and dry.
- YieldThe measures total roughly two and a half cups of dressed salad, enough for two generous plates or four as a first course.
- The hinge: drain everythingSauerkraut, canned tuna and relish all carry liquid, and macaroni keeps absorbing it. Squeeze the kraut, press the tuna dry, and dress the salad no more than half an hour before serving or it turns to paste.
- "1/4 tablespoon"Odd but unambiguous: it works out to 3/4 teaspoon. Treat the red pepper as a rounded three-quarter teaspoon and do not agonise over it.
- Cooked sauerkrautThe recipe assumes kraut that has already been cooked to soften its bite. Modern refrigerated kraut is milder; a brief warming through, then a thorough chill, gets you where the recipe is aiming. Do not add it warm.
- Sweet red pepperIn a book of this date this may well mean canned pimiento rather than a fresh bell pepper. Either works; pimiento is sweeter and softer.
- Canned tunaTuna of this period was packed in oil. Oil-packed tuna still suits this salad better than water-packed, which is drier and needs a little more mayonnaise to bind.
- Diced cheeseThe type is unspecified; a firm American or mild Cheddar suits it. Cut it in 1/4-inch dice so it reads as texture, not as a separate ingredient.
- RelishUnspecified; a sweet cucumber pickle relish is the likeliest reading and its sweetness plays against the sauerkraut.
- "Few grains white pepper"A standard old shorthand for a scant pinch, well under 1/8 teaspoon. White pepper was preferred in pale dressings and salads so no dark specks showed.
Canned fish was a standard answer both to Friday and Lenten abstinence in Catholic households and to a tight food budget, since a can of tuna and a cup of macaroni went a long way. The combination of sauerkraut with pasta, cheese and sweet pickle relish looks eccentric now, but the ingredient list reads like an inventory of already-cooked leftovers -- the macaroni, carrots and sauerkraut are all called for cooked.