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Lettuce Salad
1. Keep the lettuces, after washing and trimming, in ice water till near dinner time. Shake the water from them and give them time to drain upside down. Dish the tender heart leaves only in shallow bowls, and sliced hard-boiled eggs on top.
The lettuce though cold and fresh should be dry, except for pieces of ice strewn over in warm weather. These bowls are to be set on the dinner tables. The freshest eggs may look bad when turned blue by too long boiling, but it is not certain that even long boiling will so discolor them if they be plunged immediately in the coldest water. Between the cooks, the pantrymen, the head waiter and the second steward it happens that the eggs on lettuce nearly always come out blue.
Boil eggs six minutes; pour off the hot water immediately and fill up with cold. 2. Cut lettuce in shreds like cold slaw, with a sharp knife, on a board kept for the purpose. Have some chopped eggs ready on a plate and a cupful of vinegar seasoned with pepper and salt in a pitcher.
Dish up only as ca<??>d for, some lettuce in a deep dish, the vinegar poured over, and eggs dredged on top. 3. Cut the lettuce first in shreds and then across, quite small. It will not do to chop it in a bowl as that blackens it.
Have a thin salad dressing in a pitcher separate, and a plate of the smallest heart leaves of lettuce at hand. Dish up as called for, the lettuce in the dish, dressing poured all over it and two or three leaves set in for garnish. One of the things that helps to lower the estimation people have of hotel tables is the way they have in some houses, where they take an interest in nothing but calm stagnation, of making lettuce salads hours before they are wanted and dishing them black-looking, wilted and warm. It ruins lettuce to let it lie in vinegar long.
Three service methods for a hotel dining room rather than three distinct salads: whole heart leaves, shredded with vinegar, and shredded with dressing. The instruction that governs all three is the last line — lettuce is dressed as it goes out, never in advance.
- Dress at the last secondVinegar and salt draw water out of the leaves within minutes, which is exactly the wilted, warm, blackened result Whitehead is complaining about. Keep dressing in a pitcher and pour it over the plated lettuce, as written.
- The "blue" eggsWhat he is describing is the grey-green ring of iron sulfide that forms between yolk and white in overcooked eggs. His remedy is the correct one: stop the cooking at once in cold water. The color is harmless but looks poor against pale lettuce.
- Six minutes is short for slicingA six-minute egg has a still-jammy yolk and will smear rather than slice cleanly. For neat rounds on top of the leaves, count on nine to eleven minutes depending on egg size, then chill hard and immediately. The chopped eggs in method 2 are more forgiving.
- "Cold slaw"A folk-etymological respelling of "cole slaw," which comes from Dutch koolsla (cabbage salad). It tells you the cut he wants: fine even shreds off a sharp knife, not torn or chopped pieces.
- Why chopping blackens itBruised lettuce leaks phenolic compounds that oxidize brown, and a dull blade or a chopping bowl crushes far more cells than a clean slice. The sharp knife and clean cuts he specifies, rather than chopping in a bowl, is still the right technique.
- Straight seasoned vinegarMethod 2 dresses lettuce with a cup of vinegar with pepper and salt, no oil. Vinegar strength was unstandardised in this period, so the sharpness of the original is hard to gauge; a modern 5 percent vinegar used this way will taste harsh. The "thin salad dressing" of method 3 is not specified.
- Ice on the plateThe recipe calls for small pieces of ice strewn over the leaves in hot weather, on the condition that the lettuce otherwise stay dry. A chilled shallow bowl keeps the leaves cold without melt water on the plate.
- The garbled lineThe "ca<??>d for" in method 2 is a defect in the original printing: read it as "called for" — that is, plate to order.
- YieldNone is given; the instructions are for dishing to order in a hotel pantry rather than for a fixed number of covers. Note that method 1 uses only the tender heart leaves, so it consumes far more lettuce per serving than the shredded methods.
Jessup Whitehead wrote for the men who ran American hotel and steamboat kitchens in the 1880s and 90s, and this entry is less a recipe than a standing order to a pantry crew — note the cast of cooks, pantrymen, head waiter and second steward who between them let the eggs go green. The lettuces in question would have been loose-leaf or cabbage-heading types; the crisp iceberg that later dominated American salad bowls was not yet the market standard. He tells the crew to save only the tender heart leaves. Whitehead's complaint about houses that "take an interest in nothing but calm stagnation" is a working chef's argument for order-by-order plating — the same reasoning behind keeping dressing in a pitcher on the pantry rail today.