Harvard Salad
Make lemon baskets, following directions for Orange Baskets (see p. 429). With a small wooden skewer make an incision in centre of each handle and insert a small sprig of parsley. Fill baskets with equal parts of cold cooked sweetbread and cucumber cut in small cubes, and one-fourth the quantity of finely cut celery, moistened with Cream Dressing II (see p. 324). Pare round red radishes as thinly as possible and finely chop parings. Smooth top of baskets and cover with dressing. Sprinkle top of one-half the baskets with chopped parings, the remaining half with nnely chopped parsley. Arrange red and green baskets alternately on serving dish, and garnish with watercress-
A composed salad from the era when the salad course was as much a display piece as a dish. Nothing here is difficult, but the sweetbreads want attention and the lemon baskets want patience.
- Sweetbreads firstVeal sweetbreads (thymus) must be soaked in several changes of cold water until they run pale, then blanched in acidulated water for 15-20 minutes, plunged into ice water, and peeled of membrane before being pressed under a weighted plate until cold and firm. Only then will they cube neatly. Order them ahead from a butcher; supermarkets rarely stock them.
- Cream Dressing IIThe cross-reference is to a dressing given elsewhere in the book (p. 324); we cannot see it here, and period books use the name for both cooked egg-thickened dressings and simple cream-and-vinegar ones. Whatever stands in must be cold and stiff enough to hold a smoothed surface -- a thick mayonnaise loosened with a spoonful of heavy cream and sharpened with mustard and lemon will do.
- Lemon basketsThe referenced technique (Orange Baskets, p. 429) is not reproduced here; such baskets are generally made by cutting away part of the top of the fruit, leaving a strip across the middle as a handle, and hollowing the shell. Choose thick-skinned lemons, cut with a small sharp knife, and reserve the pulp for juice. A wooden cocktail pick does the job of the "small wooden skewer."
- CucumberSalt the diced cucumber for 20 minutes and drain it well before dressing, or it will weep into the dressing and slacken it.
- Radish paringsThe colour comes entirely from the skins, so pare as thinly as a vegetable peeler allows and chop fine. Cut them just before serving — they bleed and dull within an hour.
- ProportionsEqual volumes of sweetbread and cucumber, plus one-fourth that volume of finely cut celery. The recipe gives no yield, so judge the total by the size and number of your lemon shells.
- Keep it coldCooked sweetbread in a cream dressing is a perishable assembly. Chill the components separately, dress at the last moment, and do not let the finished baskets stand at room temperature while the rest of the meal is served.
- ServingThis is a first-course or luncheon salad, one basket per person, set on watercress. It does not scale to a bowl — the presentation is the point.
The name may be a nod to Harvard crimson, as with Harvard beets -- half the baskets are reddened with radish skin, half greened with parsley, and they alternate around the dish -- but this is a guess rather than a documented derivation, and the origin of "Harvard beets" is itself uncertain. The recipe's page references place it in the Boston Cooking-School tradition, whose books were aimed at women cooking for their own households as well as at pupils and teachers. Sweetbreads were then in common use in American cookbooks, appearing in creamed dishes, croquettes and patties; their later near-disappearance from ordinary cooking is part of what makes this dish read as exotic now.