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Eighth Day: Mabel
When Mabel and Amy had finished stoning the raisins, Mrs. King set one of them to making the salad dressing, and the other to measuring the ingredients for the gingerbread, using the dishes which Edith had for the cake, so as to save the trouble of washing. "And when the cake is finished and set to rise in the baking-tins," said Aunt Jane, " you can mix your gingerbread up in that same pan she has it in now." This was the recipe for the salad dressing:
No. 106-SIMPLE SALAD DRESSING.
One teaspoonful salt, small half teaspoon pepper, the same of dry mustard, two tablespoonfuls finely chopped parsley, a taste of grated onion, one gill of vinegar and the same of oil. Cut up cold potatoes, boiled not too long, but firm and solid, into small mouthfuls, pour the dressing over them and let them stand in it half an hour before serving. "Ellen must save out some of the potatoes she cooks for dinner," said Mrs. King, "and not boil them quite as long as the others." "But we have new potatoes, ma'am," said Ellen. "Oh, those will be delicious! Save the very smallest for us-all the little buttons you can pick out. Those that are too large for mouthfuls can be cut into two or three pieces."
A plain vinegar-and-oil dressing meant for a cold potato salad, given in the middle of a cooking-class scene. The quantities are for the dressing only; the amount of potato is left to the cook.
- A gillA gill is half a cup, so this is 1/2 cup vinegar to 1/2 cup oil. That one-to-one ratio is much sharper than a modern vinaigrette's three-to-one; the potatoes will absorb a good deal of it while they stand.
- How many potatoesNone is specified. A cup of dressing will comfortably coat about 2 lb of small boiled potatoes, serving six as a side dish. Less potato than that and the salad will be swimming.
- The hinge: dress them warmThe hinge: the half-hour stand -- The half-hour standing time is the whole method. Note that the recipe specifies cold potatoes, though potatoes take up dressing more readily while still warm from the pot.
- Boiled not too longMrs. King's instruction to undercook them slightly is sound. Potatoes cooked to fluffiness break apart when tossed; take them out while a knife meets a little resistance at the centre.
- The oilIn a household book of this date "oil" for salad means olive oil, often sold as sweet oil. A mild olive oil suits it; a strongly bitter modern extra-virgin will fight the vinegar.
- The vinegarNineteenth-century household vinegar varied in strength and need not have matched the standard 5% acidity sold now. Taste the finished dressing before pouring and slacken it with a spoonful of water if it bites.
- Mustard and onionThe dry mustard is doing real work as an emulsifier, not just a seasoning, so whisk it into the vinegar and salt before adding the oil. 'A taste of grated onion' might be read as a teaspoon or so, grated on the fine side of a box grater, juice and all.
- ServingServe at cool room temperature rather than straight from the refrigerator, and toss again before it goes to table, as the dressing separates on standing.
Six Little Cooks belongs to a small genre of the 1870s and 1880s: the cookery book written as a story, in which children are taught real recipes inside a domestic narrative, complete with a cook named Ellen who has her own opinions about the potatoes. The recipe numbering (No. 106) suggests the book doubles as a working collection, the fiction wrapped around an ordinary receipt file. The dish itself is a cold dressed potato salad, a form generally traced to German cookery and carried into American kitchens through German immigrant households, where warm potatoes dressed in vinegar were long-established; by the last quarter of the century it had become common enough in English-language household books to be given without explanation. Here the "simple" of the title means simply that: salt, pepper, mustard, parsley, onion, vinegar, oil, and nothing to break.