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Salads, Recipes for
Directions for making the following, appear under their respective headings :- دو Mayonnaise.
Orange.
Potato.
Red Cabbage.
Russian.
Salmon Mayonnaise Summer.
Winter.
Salmon à la Genevese.-INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons. -2 slices of salmon, 2 chopped shalots, a little parsley, small bunch of herbs, 2 bay-leaves, 2 carrots, pounded mace, cayenne and salt to taste, 4 tablespoonfuls of Madeira, 1/2 pint of white stock, thickening of butter and flour, 1 teaspoonful of essence of anchovies, the juice of 1 large lemon, or of 2 small ones. AVERAGE COST, 4s. ing them gently in a clean cloth. With a silver knife, cut the lettuces into small French. pieces, and the radishes and cucumbers into thin slices; arrange all these ingredi- Grouse. ents lightly on a dish, with the mustard- Lobster. and-cress, and pour under, but not over, the salad either of the salad-dressings, and do not stir it up until it is to be eaten.
It may be garnished with hard-boiled eggs, cut in slices, sliced cucumbers, nasturtiums, beetroot, and many other things that taste will always suggest to make a pretty and elegant dish. In making a good salad, care must be taken to have the herbs freshly gathered, and thoroughly drained before the sauce is added to them, or it will be watery and thin. Young spring onions, cut small, are by many persons considered an improvement to salads; but, before these are added, the cook should always consult the taste of her employer.
Slices of cold meat or poultry added to a salad make a convenient and quickly-made summer luncheon-dish; or cold fish, flaked, will also be found exceedingly nice, mixed. with it.
SEASONABLE from May to September.
The page as printed is two things collided: an alphabetical cross-reference list of Mrs Beeton's other salads, the opening ingredients of an unrelated Salmon à la Genevese, and the actual method for a plain summer salad of lettuce, radish, cucumber and mustard-and-cress. Work only from the salad directions; the salmon list breaks off mid-sentence and no method survives.
- Ignore the salmonThe ingredient list for Salmon à la Genevese has no instructions attached on this page. Treat it as a printing accident rather than something to attempt.
- Dressing under, not overThis is the hinge of the recipe. The dressing is pooled beneath the leaves and not tossed until the moment of eating, so the greens stay crisp on the table rather than collapsing during the wait.
- Dry the leaves properlyBeeton's warning that a wet salad makes the sauce "watery and thin" is exactly right and still the commonest fault. A salad spinner does in seconds what the clean cloth did, and the leaves should be dry enough that nothing beads on them.
- Mustard-and-cressA Victorian staple: white mustard and garden cress sown together and cut as seedlings, the cress usually sown a few days ahead of the faster mustard so the two are ready at the same time. Supermarket cress or any peppery microgreen stands in.
- The silver knifeSilver was specified because carbon-steel blades of the period reacted with the leaves and left grey-black marks and a metallic taste. Stainless steel has made the point moot, though tearing lettuce by hand still bruises it less.
- Which dressing"Either of the salad-dressings" refers to salad-dressing recipes given elsewhere in the book, generally an egg-and-cream dressing and a simpler oil-and-vinegar one. Any vinaigrette at roughly three parts oil to one of vinegar serves, or a mayonnaise thinned with cream.
- Nasturtiums and beetrootBoth the flowers and young leaves of nasturtium are edible and pleasantly hot; use unsprayed ones. Cooked beetroot bleeds, so add it at the last moment or the whole bowl turns pink.
- Yield and useNo quantity is given. Two large lettuces, a bunch of radishes, one cucumber and a punnet of cress make a bowl for six as a side dish, or for three to four as the luncheon plate Beeton describes, with cold chicken, ham or flaked cooked salmon folded through.
- Season"May to September" reflects a world without glasshouse and airfreight lettuce. The advice still holds in spirit: this salad is only as good as the cucumbers and radishes in it.
All About Cookery was one of the many reorganisations of Mrs Beeton's material issued after her death in 1865, arranged alphabetically as a dictionary rather than as the systematic chapters of the original Book of Household Management; that is why this entry opens with a bare list of cross-references to Mayonnaise, Potato, Red Cabbage, Russian and the rest. The salad itself is the standard English summer arrangement of the period, dressed at table rather than in the kitchen, and its instructions carry a very Victorian aside: the cook is told to consult "the taste of her employer" before adding spring onions. That single line locates the book precisely, in a household where the person cooking and the person eating were rarely the same and the kitchen took its orders upstairs. The insistence on freshly gathered, thoroughly drained herbs points to a kitchen garden or a morning market rather than a refrigerator, which is also why the entry is marked seasonable from May to September.