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Chicken Salad
Chicken salad properly prepared is of the white meat only of a fullgrown fowl roasted or boiled until perfectly tender. The use of the white meat only, however, is a concession to the appearance of the salad, as the dark meat has as much if not more value in flavor and richness. Veal is sometimes substituted for the chicken meat and frequently used as a filler where sufficient chicken is not available.
Cut cold cooked chicken into dice.
Wash and scrape the tender stalks of celery; cut them into small pieces and dry them well. Use two parts of chicken to one part of cut celery.
Prepare a mixture of one part of vinegar and three parts of Pompeian Olive Oil and pour over the chicken one hour before the salad is to be served. Keep the chicken in a cool place until just before serving, when thoroughly mix with the cut celery. Pour off any of the oil and vinegar that remains unabsorbed after the celery and chicken have been thoroughly mixed. Then add a little mayonnaise and mix again. Serve into individual por- Your doctor will tell you that no other salad oil is as healthful as good olive oil. tions on lettuce leaves or on a bed of shredded leaves and cover with mayonnaise.
A wide field is open to individual taste in the matter of garnishment.
Hard-boiled eggs either chopped separately or sliced, sliced pickle, stoned olives, capers, celery tops; arrange any or all of these in as fanciful a design as desired. For a little touch of color, tomato, pimento or strips of beet may be used. If celery is unavailable, shredded lettuce may be used in its place and the flavor secured by the use of a little celery seed.
A sound method dressed up in booklet prose: the chicken is marinated in oil and vinegar before it ever meets mayonnaise, which is the step that separates this from the pasty deli version. A few terms and proportions need translating.
- The hinge: dress the chicken firstThe hour-long soak in vinaigrette is what seasons the meat all the way through; mayonnaise alone only coats. Do not skip it or shorten it, and pour off the excess as instructed or the mayonnaise will slacken and weep.
- "Fullgrown fowl"This means a mature stewing hen, an older bird with firmer meat and far more flavor than a young broiler. Supermarket rotisserie or poached chicken breast works, but a poached whole 4-5 lb bird gives closer results. Poach at a bare simmer until the thigh reads 165F, then cool in the liquid.
- ProportionsTwo parts diced chicken to one part celery by volume, and a dressing of one part vinegar to three parts olive oil. The recipe gives no absolute quantities: roughly 4 cups diced chicken, 2 cups celery and about 1/2 cup of dressing serves six as a lunch course.
- Veal as fillerThe text itself says veal was sometimes substituted and 'frequently used as a filler where sufficient chicken is not available,' i.e. as a cheaper extender. It is neither necessary nor cheap now; use all chicken, dark meat included, as the text itself half concedes.
- Keeping it cool"A cool place" meant a larder or icebox. Marinate in the refrigerator, and keep the finished salad below 40F until it goes to the table; cooked chicken bound with mayonnaise is a classic vehicle for staphylococcal food poisoning if it sits out.
- Dry the celeryThe instruction to dry the cut celery well is deliberate. Wet celery waters down the mayonnaise and leaves the salad loose and weeping.
- Celery seed substituteIf you fall back on shredded lettuce, use celery seed with restraint, about 1/4 teaspoon for the quantity above. It is much more assertive than the stalk and turns bitter in excess.
- MayonnaisePeriod mayonnaise was made fresh with raw yolks and olive oil. Commercial mayonnaise, made with pasteurized egg, is the safer choice for a salad that will sit on a buffet.
This comes from a promotional recipe booklet issued by the Pompeian olive oil company, a common form of American food advertising in the early twentieth century: real recipes, competently written, with the brand name worked into every instruction and a health claim dropped mid-sentence, here interrupting the text to insist that a doctor would endorse olive oil. The salad itself belongs to the long American vogue for chicken salad that ran from the mid-nineteenth century through the ladies' luncheon era, when it was the standard dish for church suppers, wedding breakfasts and railroad dining cars. The insistence on white meat only, admitted here to be a matter of appearance rather than flavor, reflects a period aesthetic in which pale, uniform food read as refined. Celery, cheap and abundant after the Michigan and New York celery boom of the 1880s and 1890s, was the near-universal partner, and olive oil was still being marketed to Americans as a novel and healthful alternative to lard and butter rather than as a pantry staple.