Home › Salads › East India Salad
East India Salad
Work two ten cent cream cheeses until smooth. Moisten with milk and cream, using equal parts. Add one-half cup grated Young America cheese, one cup whipped cream, and three-fourths tablespoon granulated gelatine soaked in one tablespoon cold water and dissolved in one tablespoon boiling water. Season highly with salt and papríka, and turn into a border mould. Chill, remove from mould, arrange on lettuce leaves, fill centre with lettuce leaves, and serve with Curry Dressing (see p. 324).
A gelatine-set cheese ring from the era when a moulded salad was a mark of a good table. Nothing here is difficult, but two of the ingredients are named by price and brand rather than weight.
- "Two ten cent cream cheeses"Cream cheese was sold in small cakes of roughly three ounces, so this probably means about 6 oz total, or about three-quarters of a standard 8 oz block; bring it fully to room temperature or it will never work smooth.
- Young America cheeseA mild, semi-soft American cheddar sold in small wheels, still made in Wisconsin but rarely stocked. A mild cheddar or Colby grated fine is the right substitute; avoid anything sharp, which will fight the curry dressing.
- Gelatine quantityThree-fourths tablespoon of granulated gelatine is about 2¼ teaspoons, near enough one standard ¼ oz envelope. That sets roughly three cups of soft mixture to a sliceable but tender firmness.
- The hinge: temper the gelatineDissolved gelatine hitting cold cheese sets instantly into rubbery threads. Stir a spoonful of the cheese base into the warm gelatine first, then return it all to the bowl and beat smooth before the whipped cream goes in.
- Dissolving in one tablespoon of waterThat is a very small amount of boiling water for this much gelatine and it will cool almost at once. Set the soaked gelatine in a cup standing in hot water instead, and use it while still warm and liquid.
- Fold, do not beatThe whipped cream is what keeps the mould light rather than dense and cheesy. Fold it in last, in two additions, and get the mixture into the mould before the gelatine begins to take.
- Border mouldA ring mould of about four to five cups. Rinse it with cold water before filling, and to turn out, dip the outside in warm water for ten seconds and invert onto the platter.
- ChillingNo time is given. Allow at least four hours, and overnight is better; a gelatine set that looks firm after two hours will slump on the plate.
- Yield and servingSix to eight as a salad course. Highly seasoned is meant literally here — the cheese base is bland, and it needs enough salt and paprika to stand up to the curry dressing poured over it.
"East India" in an American cookbook of this period rarely signals an Indian dish; it signals curry powder, which is the only thing here that connects the salad to Asia at all. The curry dressing sent alongside does the work, and the mould itself belongs to a New England style of cold, moulded salad often associated with the cookery-school tradition — cold, moulded, unmoulded onto lettuce, and served with a sauce of some pronounced flavour. The two ingredients named by price and brand place the page loosely: cream cheese was still bought as a ten-cent cake rather than a weighed block, and Young America was a familiar enough grocery cheese that no explanation was thought necessary. Details of this kind spanned roughly the 1890s to the 1920s, and they would have been transparent to a cook of that era, though they are the first things a modern one has to translate.