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Berkshire Salad in Boxes
Marinate one cup cold boiled fowl cut into dice and one cup cooked French chestnuts broken in pieces with French Dressing. Add one finely chopped red pepper from which seeds have been removed, one cup celery cut into small pieces, and Mayonnaise to moisten. Trim crackers (four inches long by one inch wide, slightly salted) at ends, using a sharp knife; arrange on plate in form of box, keep in place with red ribbon one-half inch wide, and fasten at one corner by tying ribbon in a bow. Garnish opposite corner with a sprig of holly berries. Line box with lettuce leaves, put in a spoonful of salad, and mask with Mayonnaise. Any colored ribbon may be used, and flowers substituted for berries.
A holiday novelty salad from the era when a salad was expected to arrive in some sort of container. The construction is the hard part; the salad itself is straightforward chicken salad with chestnuts.
- Assemble at the last minuteThe cracker walls begin softening as soon as they touch dressed salad and lettuce. Build the boxes and fill them within a few minutes of serving, or the sides collapse.
- Fowl means a stewing henAn older boiling bird, simmered until tender, which is why the recipe says boiled rather than roasted. Poached chicken thighs give closer flavour and texture than breast; you need about one cup diced, roughly 5 oz.
- French chestnutsMarrons, that is, the large cultivated European chestnut, peeled and cooked. Vacuum-packed or jarred whole cooked chestnuts are the direct modern substitute; one cup is about 5 oz.
- Red pepperAmbiguous in the original. Given that the seeds are removed and it is chopped fine for colour, a small fresh sweet red pepper or a drained pimiento is the sensible reading, not a hot chilli.
- French Dressing in this bookFarmer's version is simply oil, vinegar, salt and pepper beaten together, in the region of four parts oil to two of vinegar. Use it sparingly here, since mayonnaise follows.
- MayonnaiseMade in this book from raw yolk. Commercial mayonnaise is pasteurised and behaves the same in the salad; if you make your own, keep it and the finished salad cold.
- MaskPeriod usage for coating the surface smoothly with a thin layer, not folding it through.
- The crackersFour inches by one inch, lightly salted; probably a long soda-cracker of the sort then sold. Few modern crackers come in that shape; cut rectangles from large crisp flatbreads or water-cracker sheets with a sharp knife, sawing rather than pressing.
- Holly berriesPoisonous if eaten, and a genuine hazard at a table with children. The recipe itself allows flowers instead, and that is the better choice; if you use greenery, keep it clear of the food.
- RibbonUse new ribbon and treat it as structural rather than decorative, since it is what holds the walls upright. Grosgrain grips the crackers better than satin.
- YieldAbout three cups of salad, going by the recipe's own measures; enough to fill several small boxes as a first course or luncheon plate.
This is one of the set-piece salads that fill Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, where the food is often less the point than the container: peppers, tomato cups, cucumber barrels, paper cases, and here a box built from crackers and tied with ribbon like a Christmas parcel. The holly, the red ribbon and the chestnuts place it squarely at the winter holidays, and the conceit borrows from the boxed confectionery given as a Christmas gift. The name points to the Berkshire hills of western Massachusetts, a fashionable resort district for Boston and New York families in that period; dishes were routinely christened after such places for the association rather than any documented local origin, so the connection is best treated as decorative too. Chestnuts, by then imported and widely available, were respectable enough for a lady's luncheon salad.