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Endive Salad
Prepare as lettuce salad, first rubbing over the bowl with a clove of garlic cut in halves. A few sprigs of chives, chopped fine, are exceedingly palatable, sprinkled over a lettuce, endive, stringbean, or other bean salad. A Few Combinations.
Dress each vegetable separately with the dressing; then arrange upon the serving-dish. Or, have the salad arranged upon the serving-dish and pour the dressing over all; then toss together and serve. About three tablespoonfuls of oil, with other ingredients in accordance, will be needed for one pint of vegetable. 1. Lettuce, tomatoes cut in halves, sprinkled with powdered tarragon, and parsley or chives. 2. Lettuce, moulded spinach and fine-chopped beets. 3. Lettuce, Boston baked beans and chives. 4. Lettuce and peppergrass. 5. Lettuce, shredded sweet peppers or pimentos, and sliced pecan nuts or almonds. 6. Lettuce, tomatoes stuffed with peas or string beans cut small, and chives chopped fine. 7. Lettuce, asparagus tips and sliced radishes.
Arrange the lettuce at the edge of dish, inside a ring of radishes sliced thin, without removing the red skins; centre of asparagus tips, with radish cut to resemble a flower.
This is really two things at once: a one-line direction for endive, and a set of salad formulas built on the same French dressing. The useful part is the ratio, which the book buries at the end.
- The ratio is the recipeThree tablespoons of oil per pint of prepared vegetable, "with other ingredients in accordance" — the book leaves the rest unspecified, but a conventional French dressing of the period would put the vinegar or lemon at roughly a third of the oil, plus salt and pepper. A pint of loose greens is a modest two servings; a pint of beans or asparagus will serve three or four.
- Garlic on the bowl, not in the saladCutting a clove and rubbing the cut faces around the bowl leaves only a trace of oil and juice. Do not mince the garlic into the dressing instead; the point is a background note, and endive is bitter enough that raw garlic will fight it.
- What "endive" means hereIn American books of this period endive usually means the frizzy-leaved chicory sold today as curly endive or frisée rather than the pale forced heads of Belgian endive, though both were known. Either works, but frisée needs the sturdier hand — dress it just before serving and it still holds up for a few minutes.
- PeppergrassGarden cress, then commonly grown in kitchen gardens and sold in bunches. Substitute watercress or the mustardy sprouted cress sold in punnets; both give the same hot, faintly bitter bite the recipe is after.
- Moulded spinachSpinach cooked, drained hard, chopped, pressed into a small cup or timbale mould and chilled, then turned out as a firm dome. Squeeze it much drier than seems reasonable or it will weep into the dressing on the plate.
- Powdered tarragonDried tarragon, rubbed to a powder. It is far stronger by volume than fresh — a pinch over halved tomatoes, not a spoonful. Fresh tarragon, chopped, is the better choice now.
- Dress separately or toss, not bothThe first method — dressing each vegetable on its own and then composing the dish — is what makes combinations 2, 3 and 7 work, since beets will bleed into everything and beans absorb far more dressing than lettuce. Reserve the toss-together method for the plain green salads.
- Combination 3Cold Boston baked beans with chives on lettuce is not a mistake or a period oddity; it is a bean salad using the molasses-sweet beans common in New England kitchens. Use them cold and well drained of their sauce, or the dressing will not cling.
Books like this one arrived at the moment the salad course was becoming respectable in American middle-class homes, and the anxiety shows in the structure: rather than a single dish, the author gives a ratio and then a numbered list of combinations, teaching the reader to improvise within safe bounds. The garlic-rubbed bowl is a French borrowing that turn-of-the-century American writers repeated constantly, and garlic itself was still widely regarded with suspicion in Anglo-American cooking of the period, often associated with immigrant kitchens. The chives, peppergrass and tarragon all point to a household with a kitchen garden or a good market, and the appearance of cold baked beans in a dressed salad is a reminder that these formulas were meant to use up what was already in the pantry. The editorial note at the head of this page refers to language on this page, which has been left as printed; nothing in the salad directions themselves has been altered.