Bolivia Salad
Cut cold boiled potatoes in one-half inch cubes; there should be one and one-half cups. Add three "hard-boiled" eggs finely chopped, one and one-half tablespoons finely ASPARAGUS SALAD, INDIVIDUAL SERVICE. - Page 329.
BERKSHIRE SALAD IN BOXES. - Page 345.
EGG SALAD. - Page 336.
PEAR SALAD. - Page 340. chopped red peppers, and one-half tablespoon chopped chives. Pour over Cream Dressing I (see p. 324) and serve in nests of lettuce leaves.
A cold potato-and-egg salad of the sort Fannie Farmer favored for luncheons: no vinegar in the salad itself, all the acidity carried by the dressing. It comes together in minutes once the potatoes and eggs are cooked and thoroughly chilled.
- The hinge: cool the potatoes firstBoiled potatoes must be completely cold before dicing, or the cubes crumble and the dressing turns to paste. Boil them whole in their skins, peel, chill, then cut.
- QuantitiesOne and a half cups of half-inch cubes is roughly half to three-quarters of a pound of potatoes before cooking. Waxy varieties hold their shape; a floury baking potato will fall apart.
- "Red peppers"Here the phrase almost certainly means sweet red pepper rather than chili, though the same books use "red pepper" for cayenne in seasoning contexts. A tablespoon and a half finely chopped is about a quarter of a small pepper. If you want heat, that is a departure from the original.
- Cream Dressing IThe book's Cream Dressing I is a cooked dressing bound with egg, slackened with cream and sharpened with vinegar and mustard -- not mayonnaise and not whipped cream. Check the recipe on p. 324 for the exact make-up and dress the salad lightly. A thin homemade mayonnaise loosened with cream is the nearest substitute.
- Hard-boiled eggsThe quotation marks around "hard-boiled" most likely register the author's preference for eggs cooked below boiling rather than hard-boiled; the method given elsewhere in these books is water held just below the simmer, off direct heat, for something in the region of 40 minutes. Twelve minutes at a bare simmer, then an ice bath, gives a firm, uncracked yolk.
- ChivesHalf a tablespoon is a modest amount for this volume. Cut them with scissors rather than a knife, which bruises them and darkens the salad.
- Yield and serviceThe recipe gives no yield; this quantity will stretch to about four as a first course or side. The lettuce nests want whole cupped leaves -- Bibb or the inner heart of iceberg -- and both salad and plates should be cold.
The name is decorative rather than geographical: turn-of-the-century American salad chapters were full of dishes titled after countries, cities and society hostesses with no real connection to the place, a fashion that gave us Russian and Cuban salads alongside this one. What it actually represents is the moment the potato salad became parlor food. Cold potatoes are often said to have been a leftovers dish in earlier American cookbooks, dressed with oil and vinegar; here the cubes are cut to a stated size, the eggs finely chopped, the whole bound in a cooked cream dressing and set in lettuce leaves for individual service. The Boston Cooking School method — weigh, measure, specify — is visible in the half-inch cube and the half tablespoon of chives, and the lettuce nest reflects the era's taste for salads that arrived already portioned rather than heaped in a bowl.