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Vegetable Salad
The special point of this dish is that peas, beans, carrots in dice, are all cooked separately and when they are cold they are placed in a large dish without being mixed. Decorate with the hearts of lettuce round the edge and with slices of tomato, and pour over it, or hand with it, a good mayonnaise.
A composed salad rather than a tossed one — the whole point is that each vegetable keeps its own colour and texture. The original assumes you know how to cook peas, beans and carrots, and tells you only what matters.
- Cook separately, and don't mixEach vegetable goes into its own pot of salted water so nothing bleeds or overcooks. On the platter they are set in distinct blocks or bands, not folded together — mixing turns it into a different dish entirely.
- DonenessAim for just tender with some bite: diced carrots about 4-5 minutes, green beans 3-4, shelled peas 2-3. Drain and spread on a tray or plunge into cold water so they stop cooking, then chill. Vegetables left to cool in their liquid go soft and dull.
- "Beans" hereMost likely green or French beans, cut short to match the carrot dice, though the recipe does not specify. Shell beans or flageolets would also work.
- Cut to matchDice the carrots and cut the beans to roughly pea size. The dish reads as deliberate only if the three components are the same scale.
- MayonnaiseA "good mayonnaise" in 1915 would have been made by hand with oil, egg yolk and vinegar or lemon, often with mustard. Loosen homemade mayonnaise with a spoonful of water or lemon juice if you intend to pour it, and leave it stiff if handing it separately.
- Raw eggHomemade mayonnaise is uncooked. Use pasteurised eggs if serving to anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised, and keep the finished salad cold.
- Assemble lateVegetables can be cooked and chilled a day ahead, but dress or garnish only at the table. Salted tomato slices weep and mayonnaise slackens within the hour.
- YieldAbout 1 lb of vegetables in total, plus a head or two of lettuce and two tomatoes, serves four to six as a first course or a side.
The Belgian Cook Book was compiled in 1915 by Mrs. Brian Luck from recipes given by Belgian refugees who had fled to England after the German invasion, and it was published in aid of relief funds. Its entries are typically brief and read as if dictated from memory rather than copied from a kitchen notebook. The same peas-beans-carrots trio turns up diced as a macédoine, and bound with mayonnaise as salade russe. The insistence on cooking each vegetable apart and keeping the piles separate is the mark of a cook trained to think about how a dish looks on the platter.