Endive Salad
Take a head of endive, wash it and dry it well, and put it into a salad-bowl. Pour over it three tablespoons of good olive-oil. Mix one tablespoon of honey (or sugar), one of vinegar, and salt and pepper in a cup, and pour over the salad just before serving.
A three-line salad that lives or dies on two things: dry leaves and a dressing that goes on at the last possible moment.
- Which endiveAn Italian book of this date most likely means curly endive (indivia riccia) or broad-leaved escarole rather than the pale Belgian chicory forced in the dark, though the recipe does not specify. One head would serve roughly two to three as a side.
- Dry means dryOil will not cling to wet leaves and the vinegar slides to the bottom of the bowl. Spin or towel the leaves until they squeak, and keep them cool until serving.
- Oil first, acid secondThe recipe coats the leaves in oil before the vinegar touches them, which is often said to slow wilting. Toss after the oil, then again after the dressing.
- The honeyA tablespoon of honey to one of vinegar makes a distinctly sweet-sour dressing, which is the point with bitter chicories. Whisk it into the vinegar in the cup until dissolved; cold honey in cold vinegar needs a minute of work, or warm the vinegar slightly.
- ProportionsThree parts oil to one part vinegar is the standard modern ratio as well, so no adjustment is needed. Use a wine or cider vinegar; a sharp distilled white vinegar will bully the honey.
- Salt and pepperSeason the dressing in the cup rather than the bowl. Salt dissolves in the vinegar and distributes evenly, where salt sprinkled on oiled leaves stays in grains.
- Timing"Just before serving" is the hinge. Dressed leaves soften as they stand, so mix the cup ahead and pour at the table.
Simple Italian Cookery (1912) was written by Antonia Isola — the pen name of Mabel Earl McGinnis — to put plain Italian home cooking in front of American readers at a moment when Italian food in the United States was still largely the food of Italian immigrant households rather than of restaurants. The book's salads are notably austere by the standards of contemporary American cookbooks, which leaned on boiled dressings and mayonnaise; here the whole apparatus is oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, mixed in a cup. The sweetened dressing is the one flourish, and it follows a long habit of pairing bitter winter chicories with something sweet — honey, sugar, raisins, or a sweet vinegar — a pairing found across northern and central Italy.