Lenten Salad
Separate yolks and whites of four "hard-boiled" eggs. Chop whites finely, marinate with French Dressing, and arrange on lettuce leaves. Force yolks through a potato ricer and pile on the centre of whites. Serve with French Dressing.
A four-ingredient composed salad that depends almost entirely on technique: the eggs must be cooked so the yolks stay pale and crumbly, and the riced yolk should go on at the last moment.
- Quotation marks on "hard-boiled"Period cookbooks of this school preferred eggs cooked below the boil, left covered in water off the heat for roughly forty minutes, which may be why the term is set off here. About twelve minutes at a bare simmer followed by an ice bath will give a tender white and an unmarbled yolk in less time.
- French DressingA simple oil-and-vinegar dressing seasoned with salt and pepper, shaken to a temporary emulsion; proportions in period books run around two to three parts oil to one of vinegar. Make it fresh; it separates within minutes and is meant to.
- The potato ricerThe point is a dry, fluffy mimosa of yolk rather than a paste. A ricer, a coarse sieve pressed through with the back of a spoon, or the large holes of a box grater all work; a food processor does not.
- Marinate means brieflyChopped whites dressed and left standing weep and go grey at the edges. Ten minutes is plenty, and the riced yolk goes on only as the plates leave the kitchen or it turns to a damp lump.
- LettuceThe recipe says only "lettuce leaves." Whole, cupped leaves of a soft head lettuce such as butter or Bibb suit the dish, since the cup holds the dressed whites.
- Seasoning the yolksThe recipe seasons only the whites. A little salt tossed lightly through the riced yolk, or a dusting of paprika over the finished mound, brings the two halves into balance.
- YieldFour eggs makes four small first-course salads, or two as a light lunch plate with bread.
Lent accounts for the name and for the salad's presence in a general cookbook: eggs and dairy were the fallback protein when meat was set aside. The riced-yolk garnish is the same trick the French call mimosa, after the yellow blossom, and it shows up across the period on asparagus, on salads and on cold fish. That the recipe bothers to specify a potato ricer is characteristic of the period's turn away from the older habit of "a lump of butter the size of a walnut" and toward named tools and measured quantities.