Home › Salad Dressings › Macedoine Salad
Macedoine Salad
Cut pieces of carrot and turnip one inch long and half an inch thick. Put over the fire in boiling water and bring quickly to the boiling-point; drain, cover with fresh water, and cook until tender; score the top of each piece and insert an asparagus point. Dip the pieces in a little melted gelatine and set alternately in a circle on the serving-dish. Have carrots cut in small cubes or straws, turnips and beet root the same, green string beans cut in small pieces, asparagus and peas, all cooked separately until tender. Mix with French dressing and dispose inside the circle.
Each vegetable may be massed by itself, or all may be mixed together. Finish the top with half a dozen short stalks of asparagus.
A composed vegetable salad built for the eye as much as the palate. The one thing to get right is that each vegetable is cooked separately and cooled dry before dressing, or the whole thing bleeds into one color.
- The gelatine glaze"A little melted gelatine" means a thin aspic used as glue and shine, not a set jelly. Soften about 1 teaspoon powdered gelatine in 2 tablespoons cold water, dissolve it in 1/2 cup warm vegetable stock, and let it cool to the consistency of raw egg white before dipping. Chill the dipped pieces on the dish so the coat sets.
- Asparagus pointsA "point" is the tip, cut 1 to 1 1/2 inches long. Blanch tips 2 to 3 minutes for thin spears, 4 for thick, then shock in ice water so they stay green.
- Turnip and carrot batonsOne inch by half an inch is a sturdy baton. The first quick boil and change of water is probably meant to moderate the strong flavour of the turnip, though the recipe gives no reason. Salt the second water and cook until a knife enters with slight resistance, roughly 5 to 8 minutes.
- Beet root, kept apartBeet root -- Cook beets whole and unpeeled, then peel and cut. The recipe allows each vegetable to be massed by itself or all mixed together; if you want to keep the colours distinct, dress the beets separately at the last moment and set them in their own group, or everything on the plate turns pink.
- French dressing of the periodUsually oil and vinegar with salt and pepper, commonly around three parts oil to one of vinegar, whisked or shaken to a temporary emulsion; proportions varied from book to book, and some period versions added mustard or paprika. Check the book's own French dressing recipe if it gives one.
- Dress warm, serve coldVegetables tend to take up dressing more readily while still barely warm, but the aspic-glazed border must stay chilled. Dress the diced mixture, let it cool, then assemble inside the ring.
- Peas and beansFresh shelled peas need 3 to 4 minutes; frozen need barely a minute. String beans cut into half-inch lengths take 4 to 5 minutes. Both go into ice water immediately.
- YieldThe original gives none. Built on a 10-inch platter with about 4 cups of cut vegetables in total, it serves six as a first course or side.
Macédoine is French kitchen shorthand for a mixture of vegetables or fruits cut to a uniform dice, the name generally traced to Macedonia as a byword for a patchwork of peoples under one rule — a culinary joke about variety in a single dish. By the time this book was written, the macédoine had become a staple of the American cold table, reflecting the period's enthusiasm for architectural salads: vegetables cooked separately to preserve their color, glazed with aspic, and arranged in rings and borders. The technique belongs to the era of the professional garde-manger, whose showpieces filtered into domestic cookbooks aimed at ambitious hostesses.