Ham Salad
Excellent change from potato salad for hotel suppers. 1 quart of boiled potatoes, in dice. 1 quart of celery and lettuce. 1 quart of lean boiled ham, minced. 1 tablespoonful of made mustard. 1 do celery extract. The hollandaise or any of the foregoing salad creams. Use the shank meat of boiled ham; chop it fine in a wooden bowl. Cut the vegetables neatly in dice of uniform appearance. Mix well with the dressing. Now what can we careful managers of provisions best do with a whole panful of nice white celery (in ice water) when all the heart pieces have already been picked out and eaten with salt only ? There are but two or three ways of cooking celery, and very little suffices for that.
A hotel steward's salad built on cooked leftovers, measured by volume rather than weight. Two things need translating before you start: what the book means by "hollandaise," and what celery extract was.
- The quarts are volume, dicedEach quart is 4 cups of already-cut material, so very roughly 1 1/4-1 1/2 lb boiled potatoes, a similar weight of lean ham off the bone, and a large head of celery padded out with lettuce. Equal parts by volume is the whole design; keep it.
- "Hollandaise" here is a cold salad creamThe recipe lists it among "the foregoing salad creams," so in this book it is a cold egg-based dressing rather than the warm butter emulsion. Mayonnaise, or mayonnaise loosened with a little cream and lemon, is a reasonable substitution.
- Made mustard"Made mustard" means prepared mustard from the jar, not dry powder. A tablespoon of a plain yellow or mild Dijon is the intent.
- Celery extractA commercial flavouring essence, now hard to find on ordinary retail shelves. A scant teaspoon of celery seed, bruised, or a pinch of celery salt with the salt adjusted down, covers the same ground.
- Shank meatThe shank is the sinewy end of a boiled ham, too tough to slice for the plate but perfectly good minced. Any lean cooked ham works; avoid wet deli ham, which will thin the dressing.
- ChoppingThe wooden bowl and curved chopper produced an irregular mince that holds dressing. A few pulses in a food processor does it, but stop early — a paste turns the salad to spread.
- Lettuce in the mixLettuce dressed and held will collapse. Cut and fold it in at the last moment, or use only the crisp ribs of romaine and keep the leafy parts for lining the bowl.
- Yield and serviceAbout three quarts of cut material before dressing; enough, at a guess, for a dozen as a supper salad. Dress the potatoes while barely warm so they take the seasoning, then chill and correct the salt before serving.
The closing paragraph is the more revealing half of this entry: the author is not really giving a recipe so much as solving an inventory problem. Hotel kitchens kept pans of trimmed celery standing in ice water for the relish tray, and once diners had picked out the tender pale hearts the outer ribs sat there earning nothing. Ham shanks posed the same question at the other end of the larder. A composed salad bound with a cold egg dressing absorbed both, and the potato gave it bulk at almost no cost. Prepared celery extract and bottled essences let a cook push the celery flavour past what the limp outer stalks could supply on their own.