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Russian Salad
Two ounces of roast chicken, two ounces of ham, two ounces of beef tongue, two ounces of beef, two ounces of mutton, four truffles, twelve anchovies, three stalks of celery, two heads of lettuce, eight tablespoonfuls of sauce Tartare. Cut up and mix carefully together the chicken, ham, beef-tongue, beef and mutton, truffles, anchovies and celery. Mix with the sauce Tartare, and serve in nests of crisp lettuce leaves.
A German Salad.
One lobster, three eggs, parsley, onion, lettuce, French dressing, one tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce, two tablespoonfuls of tarragon vinegar. Cut a boiled lobster into good sized pieces, put it in a salad bowl, cover it over with the hard boiled eggs chopped fine, then add the onion juice and chopped parsley. Arrange on lettuce leaves. Make a French dressing and add to it the Worcestershire sauce and the tarragon vinegar, and pour it over the salad.
Two salads run together on one page: a meat-based Russian salad of the older French type, and a lobster salad called German. Both are assembly jobs, so the work is in the components.
- No potatoes hereThis is one of the older meat-based readings of salade russe — a composed salad of cold cooked meats — rather than the diced potato, carrot and pea version sold as Russian salad today. Do not add vegetables to fill it out; the point is the contrast of five meats.
- Scale and yieldTen ounces of meat total, plus celery, dressed with eight tablespoons of sauce; the recipe states no yield, but this is a small quantity, suited to a first course for a few people. The two-ounce weights are most easily met with leftovers.
- Sauce Tartare, 1900 styleIn books of this period tartare sauce is a mayonnaise stiffened with chopped capers, gherkins, parsley and often a little onion or mustard. Eight tablespoons is half a cup, enough to bind rather than drown.
- TrufflesFour truffles in a recipe of this kind would most likely have been small preserved black truffles, sliced thin. A teaspoon of good truffle paste, or a few slices of fresh truffle if the budget allows, gives a similar aromatic note; truffle oil does not.
- AnchoviesTwelve anchovies of the era were likely salt-packed whole fish needing rinsing, filleting and a soak. Twelve modern oil-packed fillets are already assertively salty — taste before salting the sauce at all.
- MuttonMutton is mature sheep, stronger and fattier than lamb, and rarely stocked. Cold roast leg of lamb stands in without unbalancing the dish; skim off any set fat, which turns waxy when cold.
- Onion juice in the lobster saladOnion juice was got by grating an onion and pressing the pulp through cloth. The recipe gives no quantity; a teaspoon or so is enough to perfume the lobster rather than flavour it.
- Dressing the lobsterFrench dressing here is simply oil and vinegar seasoned; with the Worcestershire and two tablespoons of tarragon vinegar added, keep the oil generous or the whole thing turns sharp. Dress it just before serving so the lettuce stays crisp.
The meat version given here reflects what French-trained chefs of the late nineteenth century meant by salade à la russe: cold cooked meats, tongue, truffles and anchovy bound in a thick sauce and built up on a dish, closer to a hors d'oeuvre than to a bowl of greens. The potato-and-pea salad that now carries the name is a separate line of descent, thriftier and later in its familiar form. That a salad book of the period includes a five-meat composed salad and a lobster salad on the same page says something about how the word salad was then understood — a way of serving cold cooked food elegantly, with lettuce as the plate rather than the substance.