Egg Salad
6 hard-boiled eggs 1 head lettuce Mayonnaise dressing Cut the whites of the eggs into rings and arrange them on the lettuce leaves; sift over them the yolks, using a fine wire sieve. Serve with Mayonnaise dressing.
POTATO SALAD No. 1 4 boiled potatoes 1 chopped onion French dressing Lettuce 1 hard-boiled egg فسد To make the best salad do not use left-over potatoes, but boil them freshly, removing them from the water the moment they are tender. Slice carefully; mix with the onion and French dressing and serve on lettuce leaves garnished with slices of hard-boiled egg.
POTATO SALAD No. 2 4 boiled potatoes 4 hard-boiled eggs Mayonnaise dressing Lettuce 1 tablespoon chopped parsley Boil the potatoes, removing them from the water as soon as they are tender; slice and mix with the eggs, finely chopped, and the Mayonnaise. Serve on lettuce leaves and sprinkle parsley over the top.
Three plain composed salads that depend almost entirely on technique, since there is nothing here to hide behind. The page assumes you already have mayonnaise and French dressing made from the book's dressing section.
- The hinge: sieved yolkPushing the yolks through a fine sieve is what makes this salad look like anything at all — it gives a light, powdery drift rather than crumbled chunks. A tea strainer or the finest disc of a food mill works; do it directly over the assembled plate so the yolk is not compacted by handling.
- Hard-boiled eggs that slice cleanlyFor neat white rings you want no grey-green ring and a centred yolk. Twelve minutes at a bare simmer, then straight into cold water, and cut with a wet thin-bladed knife or an egg slicer.
- Dressing the potatoes warmThe instruction to boil potatoes freshly rather than use leftovers is sound. The book does not say why, but warm potato takes up French dressing more readily than cold, so slicing and dressing while the potato is still hot to the hand, then letting the salad come to room temperature, follows the spirit of it.
- Choice of potatoWaxy potatoes — Yukon Gold, red-skinned, fingerlings — hold their slices. Russets and other floury bakers will collapse into the dressing, which is fine for Potato Salad No. 2 with mayonnaise but ruins No. 1.
- French dressing, 1900 styleFrench dressing, period style -- Here French dressing means a plain oil-and-vinegar dressing with salt and pepper; period recipes vary in proportion, commonly somewhere between two and three parts oil to one of vinegar. It is not the sweet orange bottled product sold under that name today.
- The chopped onionOne whole raw onion to four potatoes is aggressive by current taste. Use a small onion or a few shallots, and if the bite worries you, rinse the chopped onion in cold water and pat it dry before mixing.
- Homemade mayonnaiseMayonnaise dressing of this period is made with raw yolk and not cooked. If you are serving anyone elderly, pregnant, or immune-compromised, use pasteurized eggs or a commercial mayonnaise.
- YieldNo yields are given. On the quantities listed, each of the three salads will serve about four as a first course or side. All are best assembled shortly before serving, as lettuce under dressing wilts quickly.
Sieved yolk over egg is the effect French cooking names for the mimosa blossom it is said to resemble. The lettuce leaf is the period marker: in these decades a salad was expected to be arranged and presented, not tossed, and recipes commonly close with instructions on how to arrange it and what to sprinkle over the top. The insistence on freshly boiled potatoes rather than leftovers belongs to a kitchen where mayonnaise and French dressing were both made by hand, and a cook could reasonably be told to start from scratch. The book's loose-leaf format, with removable pages so a household could rearrange or add to it, was one of several such systems marketed to American home cooks in the early twentieth century.