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Artichoke Salad (Used as a border for shrimp)
(Used as a border for shrimp, lobster, chicken and other salads.) (MRS. E. M. LUCAS, IN BOSTON COOKING-SCHOOL MAGAZINE.) Cut boiled artichokes into quarter-inch slices and stamp out with a French vegetable cutter. To half a pint add one tablespoonful of olive oil, half a tablespoonful of tarragon vinegar and one-fourth a teaspoonful of salt; toss lightly together and let stand one hour; drain, and arrange as a border with an outer layer of tiny blanched lettuce leaves. 2. Scoop out the centres of the artichokes and fill with mayonnaise, or with ravigote, tartare or tyrolienne sauce. Serve on lettuce leaves as a border to a meat or fish salad. 3. Fill the centres with walnut meats, sliced, or tender celery stalks, cut fine and mixed with mayonnaise.
A garnish rather than a dish in its own right: cooked artichoke, briefly marinated, set as a ring around a shrimp or lobster salad. The one thing that decides whether it works is the hour of marinating — boiled artichoke is watery and bland, and the oil-and-vinegar rest is what makes it taste of anything.
- Which artichokeThis means globe artichokes, boiled and pared down to the fleshy bottoms — the only part thick enough to slice a quarter-inch and stamp. Frozen or jarred artichoke bottoms work; marinated jarred hearts do not, as they are already acidulated and will fall apart under a cutter.
- Half a pintHalf a pint is one cup of the stamped rounds, loosely packed. It will take at least a couple of large artichoke bottoms, and probably more — expect substantial trim loss.
- French vegetable cutterA set of small plain or fluted round cutters, roughly 1/2 to 3/4 inch, sold today as aspic or truffle cutters. A piping tip or the wide end of a small pastry tube does the same job.
- Tarragon vinegarStill sold, and worth having for cold sauces; otherwise steep a few bruised tarragon sprigs in white wine vinegar for a day. Plain white vinegar is harsher and will need slightly more oil to balance.
- Blanched lettuce leavesIn the usage of the period this means the pale inner leaves of a head of lettuce, not leaves dipped in boiling water. Use the small hearts of romaine or Boston lettuce.
- The three saucesRavigote here is a vinaigrette with capers, onion and chopped herbs; tartare is mayonnaise with pickle, caper and herb; tyrolienne is a tomato-tinted mayonnaise, often with a little onion. All are cold and made ahead.
- Homemade mayonnaiseThe book assumes raw-yolk mayonnaise. If the salad will sit out on a buffet, use pasteurised eggs or a commercial mayonnaise as the base for the flavoured versions.
- Yield and assemblyA cup of rounds is enough to border a platter for a small party. Drain the marinated artichoke well and pat it dry, or the liquid will bleed into the lettuce and the dressed salad in the centre.
This comes out of the Boston Cooking-School Magazine, from a period associated with the American fashion for architectural cold food: salads built as rings, borders and moulds, with the garnish given as much attention as the thing it surrounded. The French vegetable cutter it calls for seems to have been a familiar item in a well-supplied kitchen of the period, when stamping vegetables into uniform shapes was ordinary work rather than a flourish. Globe artichokes were a comparatively genteel vegetable in the United States then, and associated with French cookery, which is also why the recipe reaches for ravigote, tartare and tyrolienne by name, terms the professional kitchen offered to a home cook who might well have been presumed to know them.