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Cucumber Salad
Remove thick slices from both ends of a cucumber, cut off a thick paring, and with a sharp pointed knife cut five parallel grooves lengthwise of cucumber at equal distances; then cut in thin parallel slices crosswise, keeping cucumber in its original shape. Arrange on lettuce leaves, and pour over Parisian French Dressing. Serve with fish course.
A knife exercise more than a recipe: the grooving is what turns plain cucumber into a garnish worth putting on the table. A few notes on the cucumber itself and the dressing it refers to.
- The groovesCutting five lengthwise channels before slicing gives each round a scalloped, flower-like edge. A citrus zester or channel knife does the job faster and more evenly than a paring knife, and the depth matters more than the spacing.
- Keeping it in shapeSlicing thinly while holding the cucumber together lets you fan the slices out in an overlapping row on the plate. Chill the whole cucumber first; a cold, firm one slices far more cleanly than a room-temperature one.
- The cucumber to buyCucumbers of Farmer's day were generally thicker-skinned, seedier field cucumbers, which may be why she calls for a thick paring. A modern English or Persian cucumber needs no peeling at all, and the peel gives the grooves better contrast.
- Salting, if you likeSliced cucumber weeps within minutes and thins the dressing. A light salting for ten minutes, then a pat dry, keeps the plate from turning watery, though it does soften the crisp edge of the slices.
- Parisian French DressingThat is the book's own cross-reference to a dressing given elsewhere in the volume; look it up there for the exact proportions. Any well-made oil-and-vinegar dressing stands in for it.
- Dress at the last momentPour the dressing over as the plates go out. Cucumber and lettuce both collapse quickly under vinegar and oil, and this salad is entirely about crispness.
- YieldOne medium cucumber will make about four small side salads — a light course, not a bowl of salad.
Cucumber served cold with an oil-and-vinegar dressing alongside fish is a very old pairing, and by the time Fannie Farmer published The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book in 1896 it was a familiar sight in formal American dining: a cool, acidic plate set against a rich fish course, the ancestor of the cucumber that still turns up with poached salmon. What marks this entry as belonging to its moment is the fussiness of the cutting. Late-nineteenth-century cookery schools are often said to have treated garnishing as a discipline in its own right, and grooved cucumber slices, radish roses and turned vegetables were the sort of flourish expected of the woman running a household with pretensions to elegance. The recipe assumes the reader already knows how to make a vinaigrette; what she is being taught is presentation.