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Poetic Recipe for Salad
The Rev. Sydney is sprinkled over, about 6 large tablespoon- Smith's recipe. "Two large potatoes, pass'd through kitchen sieve, Smoothness and softness to the salad give:
Of mordant mustard add a single spoon, Distrust the condiment that bites too soon; But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault, To add a double quantity of salt:
Four times the spoon with oil of Lucca crown, And twice with vinegar procured from 'town;' True flavour needs it, and your poet begs, The pounded yellow of two well-boil'd eggs.
Let onion's atoms lurk within the bowl, And, scarce suspected, animate the whole And, lastly, in the flavour'd compound toss A magic spoonful of anchovy sauce.
Oh! great and glorious and herbaceous treat, 'Twould tempt the dying anchorite to eat.
Back to the world he'd turn his weary soul, And plunge his fingers in the salad-bowl."
The verse is a dressing recipe with all its proportions intact, counted out in spoonfuls. The scrambled words at the top ("is sprinkled over, about 6 large tablespoon-") are stray type from a neighbouring entry, not part of the poem.
- The proportions, in plain numbersWorking from the verse: 1 spoon made mustard, 2 spoons salt, 4 spoons oil, 2 spoons vinegar, plus 2 sieved potatoes, 2 hard-boiled yolks, a little grated onion and 1 spoon anchovy sauce. Treat the spoon as a teaspoon and the 2 spoons of salt as an upper limit; at tablespoon scale the salt is inedible.
- Oil of LuccaLucca in Tuscany was the byword for fine table olive oil in nineteenth-century Britain, sold in flasks by grocers. Any decent mild extra-virgin olive oil answers; a peppery, bitter oil fights the mustard.
- Vinegar "procured from town""town" here most likely means London, i.e. a bought vinegar rather than a sharp homemade one. White wine vinegar suits.
- "Distrust the condiment that bites too soon"This is the hinge. English mustard powder mixed with water is savagely hot for the first few minutes and settles as it stands, so mix it well ahead, and add it to the dressing rather than to the bowl of leaves.
- The potatoesTwo boiled potatoes pushed through a sieve, or a ricer, while still warm. They give the dressing its body, and they will turn gluey if worked in a food processor.
- The yolksPounded yolks of hard-boiled eggs, mashed to a paste with a little of the oil before the rest is added. Whites are not used here; keep them for the garnish.
- Anchovy sauceA thin bottled anchovy condiment once standard in British larders, closer to fish sauce than to paste. Half a teaspoon of anchovy paste or a teaspoon of Asian fish sauce gives the same background salt, in which case cut the added salt right back.
- Onion "scarce suspected"Grate it on the fine side of a box grater, or rub the bowl with a cut clove and discard it. Chopped onion is too assertive for what the poem is after.
- YieldEnough to dress a large bowl of lettuce. Loosen with a spoonful of water or cream if the potato makes it too thick to coat the leaves.
The lines are by Sydney Smith (1771-1845), the Anglican clergyman, founder of the Edinburgh Review and one of the most quoted wits of his generation, who ended his career as a canon of St Paul's. His salad verses circulated in letters and memoirs and were reprinted so often in Victorian and Edwardian cookery books that they became a fixture of the salad chapter, appearing under headings like this one long after most readers had forgotten who he was. The sieved potato here does the binding work that mayonnaise or bottled salad cream would later do. The joke about the dying anchorite abandoning his cell for the salad-bowl is what kept the poem in print, but the recipe underneath it is workable, and the warning about mustard that bites too soon is genuinely good advice.