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Flemish Salad
This is fillets of herring, laid in a bowl with slices of apple, beetroot, cold potatoes, and cold cooked sprouts, covered with the ordinary salad dressing. If the fish is salted, let it soak first of all in milk to take away the greater part of the salt. This is a winter dish, but the same sort of thing is prepared in summer, substituting cold cooked peas, cauliflower, artichokes, beans, with the fish.
A loose formula rather than a fixed recipe, which is how most composed salads were written in 1915. The one thing to get right is the herring: buy it already cured, and taste it before you commit it to the bowl.
- Which herringSalted, pickled or marinated herring fillets (matjes, rollmops drained of their pickle, or salt herring from a Northern European deli) suit the dish best; the recipe's "if the fish is salted" allows for unsalted fish as well. Fresh raw herring is not a good substitute.
- The milk soakHeavily salted herring needs 2 to 12 hours in cold milk in the refrigerator, depending on how hard the cure is; change the milk once. Taste a corner before dressing the salad, since modern pickled fillets are often mild enough to need no soaking at all.
- "Ordinary salad dressing"The recipe does not define it; a plain vinaigrette of oil, vinegar, salt and pepper is the safe reading. A spoonful of mustard suits the fish, and mayonnaise or soured cream is used in some Belgian and Dutch herring salads.
- BeetrootCooked, not raw, and not pickled in sweet vinegar unless you want the salad to taste of it. Dress the beetroot separately and add it last if you want to keep the potatoes and apple from turning pink.
- SproutsBrussels sprouts, boiled until just tender and cooled; halve or quarter the large ones. Overcooked sprouts collapse in the dressing and turn sulphurous as they sit.
- PotatoesWaxy varieties, boiled in their skins, peeled and sliced while still warm so they take up the dressing. Floury potatoes break down into paste.
- AppleA firm tart apple, sliced thin and tossed with a little of the vinaigrette or lemon juice at once to keep it from browning.
- Proportions and yieldThe recipe gives no quantities. Roughly equal volumes of fish, potato and vegetables, with less apple and beetroot, is a workable starting point; let it stand a while before serving and serve cool rather than fridge-cold.
The Belgian Cook Book was compiled in 1915 from recipes given by Belgian refugees who had fled to Britain after the German invasion, and its dishes are domestic rather than restaurant cooking, remembered rather than tested. A herring salad of this kind belongs to the whole North Sea coast: closely related versions appear as haringsalade in the Netherlands, Heringssalat in Germany and sillsallad in Sweden, commonly with beetroot, potato and apple. Salt or pickled herring was a cheap winter protein of the Low Countries, preserved at sea and kept in barrels, and a milk soak of the kind described here is a long-established way of drawing out a hard cure. The summer list at the end, with peas, cauliflower, artichokes and beans, shows that a salad here meant whatever cooked vegetables the season offered, bound with dressing.