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Imperial Salad
French dressing, rule for mayonnaise, asparagus, truffles. Cut off some green asparagus tops one inch in length; cook them in boiled salted water; drain and lay them in a bowl, macerate with a French dressing. Cut some cooked truffles into the same length as the asparagus, season them the same, and one-half hour later lay them on a sieve to drain. Then add them to the asparagus and mingle them both with a mayonnaise, adding a little mustard.
A composed salad of two ingredients and two dressings, written in the shorthand of a professional kitchen: the first line is a list of cross-references, not a step. Everything depends on getting the asparagus and truffles thoroughly drained before the mayonnaise goes on.
- "Rule for" means "see the recipe for"The opening line is an ingredient roster pointing you to the book's French dressing and mayonnaise entries. Make both before you start; neither is described here.
- Macerate means marinateIn salad writing of this period, to macerate is simply to steep in dressing. The half hour is specified for the truffles; the asparagus is presumably left to steep alongside for a similar time.
- Cook the asparagus brieflyOne-inch green tips need only two to four minutes in well-salted boiling water, then a plunge into ice water to hold the colour. Longer boiling, common in period recipes, will collapse the tips into the mayonnaise.
- The hinge is drainageThe sieve step is not optional fussiness. Oil and vinegar clinging to the vegetables will thin the mayonnaise and break it, leaving a slack, weeping salad.
- Truffles"Cooked truffles" most likely means preserved truffles from a tin or bottle, though it may equally mean fresh truffles cooked before slicing; either was costly but obtainable. Whole preserved truffles are still sold in small jars, and a good jarred black truffle, drained and sliced into batons, is the honest substitute. Truffle oil is a different flavour and does not stand in.
- The mustardAbout half a teaspoon of Dijon-style mustard stirred into a cup of mayonnaise is enough. Its job is to cut the richness and pull the two marinades together, not to be tasted as mustard.
- Raw-egg mayonnaiseHomemade mayonnaise is uncooked egg yolk. Use pasteurized eggs if serving anyone elderly, pregnant, very young or immune-compromised, and keep the finished salad cold.
- Yield and serviceNo quantities are given; as a working guide, a pound of asparagus and a small jar of truffles would dress four to six as a first course. Serve cold, on chilled plates, ideally within an hour of dressing.
The name is of a piece with the salad lists of the period, when hotel and club kitchens attached words like Imperial, Royal and Princess to combinations built on an expensive ingredient. Here the expense is the truffle, sliced to match the asparagus tips so that the two read as one shape on the plate; asparagus and truffle together were a familiar luxury pairing in the French repertoire that American cookbooks were drawing on at the turn of the century. The construction follows professional practice of the period: each element separately marinated in vinaigrette, drained, then bound at the last moment in mayonnaise, a method that keeps the flavours distinct rather than letting a single dressing flatten them. Collections devoted to salads were a recognisable publishing niche in these years, alongside the rise of the salad course in middle-class dining.