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Chicken Salad, No. 3
Arrange the salad upon the centre of the dish and mask with mayonnaise; then with pastry bag and tube pipe the dressing in some fanciful design.
Surround with a border of aspic jelly, tinted a delicate green. The jelly may be cut in blocks or triangles, or into small cubes, and then massed about the salad. Cut the aspic in a cold room; first dip the knife in hot water and wipe dry.
This is a finishing and plating instruction rather than a full recipe; it assumes you already have a dressed chicken salad, a bowl of mayonnaise and a pan of aspic on hand. The points below fill in what the original takes for granted.
- What the salad itself isChicken salad of this period is generally cold cooked chicken cut in dice or short strips, mixed with diced celery and bound lightly with mayonnaise. Keep the binding sparing here, since the surface coat adds more.
- Two consistencies of mayonnaiseThe mayonnaise used to mask must be loose enough to flow into a smooth sheet; the mayonnaise for piping must be stiff enough to hold a ridge. Reserve a portion and beat it thicker, or slacken the masking portion with a spoonful of cream, before you start.
- Piping without a fitted bagA period pastry bag and tube is a modern piping bag with a decorative tip. A disposable bag or a corner-snipped freezer bag works, but chill the filled bag briefly so hand warmth does not soften the emulsion mid-design.
- Aspic jellyAspic is clarified chicken or veal stock set with gelatine, poured into a shallow pan to about half an inch and chilled firm. If you are using powdered gelatine with commercial stock, allow a firmer set than for a moulded jelly so the cut blocks keep their edges on the plate.
- Tinting it greenNineteenth-century kitchens tinted aspic with spinach green, made by pounding spinach leaves, straining the juice and heating it gently so the colour coagulates and can be lifted off. A drop of modern food colouring does the same job; either way, tint the liquid stock before setting, not the finished jelly.
- "Cut the aspic in a cold room"This is the hinge of the whole passage. Gelatine softens fast at room temperature and the cut faces will slump and go cloudy. Work quickly on a chilled tray, and return both jelly and finished platter to the refrigerator between stages.
- The hot knifeDipping the blade in hot water and wiping it dry melts a hair's breadth at the cut and leaves a glossy face rather than a torn one. Wipe between every cut; a wet blade drags and dilutes the surface.
- Timing and servingMask and pipe no more than two or three hours ahead, then keep the platter refrigerated and uncovered so the coat stays firm.
Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties came out of the Boston Cooking-School circle at the very end of the nineteenth century, when chicken salad had moved from a supper improvisation to the centrepiece of the ladies' luncheon and the church social. What this entry records is not cookery so much as presentation: the masked surface, the piped design and the border of chopped or cubed aspic were the standard vocabulary of cold buffet work borrowed from professional French garde-manger practice and scaled down for a competent household cook with a pastry bag. Green-tinted aspic was a favourite of the period, spinach juice being one of several colouring agents in use alongside cochineal, caramel and saffron. The insistence on a cold room is a reminder of the working conditions: an ordinary kitchen in 1900 had an icebox and a cool pantry, not refrigeration.