Lettuce Salad
Wash one head romaine and cut in pieces, using scissors. Mix two cups cold riced potatoes, one-half pound white mushroom caps peeled and cut in eighths, and one pound Brazil nut meats (from which skins have been removed) cut in pieces. Moisten with French Dressing, made by allowing one-third tarragon vinegar to two-thirds olive oil. Arrange on salad dish, surround with romaine, and garnish with three peeled mushroom caps and six Brazil nut meats.
Macédoine Salad Marinate separately cold cooked cauliflower, peas, and carrots cut in small cubes, and outer stalks of celery finely cut. Arrange peas and carrots in alternate piles in centre of a salad dish. Pile cauliflower on top. Arrange celery in four piles at equal distances. At top of each pile place a small gherkin cut lengthwise in very thin slices, beginning at blossom end and cutting nearly to stem end. Open slices to represent a fan. Place between piles of celery a slice of tomato.
Almost any cold cooked vegetables on hand may be used for a Macédoine Salad, and if care is taken in arrangement, they make a very attractive dish.
Two salads run together here: a substantial potato, mushroom and Brazil nut salad under the heading "Lettuce Salad," and a Macédoine of cold cooked vegetables. Both are assembly jobs, and the interest is almost entirely in proportion and arrangement.
- Riced potatoesBoiled potatoes pushed through a ricer or food mill while still warm, then cooled. About 1 lb of potatoes gives the two cups called for. Do not use a food processor or the starch turns to paste.
- Peeling mushroomsThis book, like other cookbooks of its day, calls for stripping the thin skin from mushroom caps. With cultivated white mushrooms it is unnecessary; wipe them and trim the stem flush.
- Raw mushroomsThe caps go in uncooked, which is worth knowing before you commit — a pound of raw mushroom in eighths is assertive. Sliced thin and dressed for twenty minutes they soften and take the vinaigrette better.
- A pound of Brazil nutsThat is roughly 3 to 3 1/2 cups of shelled nut meats and it will dominate everything else in the bowl. Half that amount balances the potato better. To loosen the brown skins, blanch the nuts briefly in boiling water or warm them in a low oven, then rub.
- The dressing ratioOne-third tarragon vinegar to two-thirds oil is a 1:2 vinaigrette, sharper than the 1:3 more usual now; the potato and nuts absorb a great deal of dressing. Season with salt and pepper, which the original leaves unstated.
- MacédoineSimply a mixture of vegetables cut in small even dice — the name comes to English from French cookery. "Marinate separately" means dress each vegetable on its own so the colours stay distinct and the beet or carrot does not bleed.
- The gherkin fanSlice lengthwise from the blossom end almost to the stem, leaving the stem intact as a hinge, then press the slices apart. Small firm pickled gherkins work; the large soft kind collapse.
- YieldThe first salad, made as written, serves eight to ten as a first course and is closer to a luncheon dish than a side. The Macédoine depends entirely on what you have; four cups of diced vegetables serves six.
The Boston Cooking-School book of this period treated salad as an exercise in composition as much as flavour: vegetables were marinated separately, piled in geometry, and finished with a carved pickle or a plain slice of tomato. That formality descends from the French service that shaped American hotel and boarding-house cooking in the late nineteenth century, and a Macédoine — a neat dice of several vegetables, each dressed apart — is one of its plainest survivals. The Brazil nuts are the period detail. They reached northern markets through the river trade out of Pará, and a pound of them in a lettuce salad reads today as extravagance.