Swiss Salad
Mix one cup cold cooked chicken cut in cubes, one cucumber pared and cut in cubes, one cup chopped English walnut meats, and one cup French peas. Marinate with French Dressing, arrange on serving dish, and garnish with Mayonnaise Dressing.
A composed cold salad of the sort Fannie Farmer's book is full of: four ingredients in equal cups, dressed twice. The proportions need a light hand more than they need translating.
- French peasThese are petits pois — the small, sweet early peas sold canned or bottled, drained and used cold. Frozen baby peas, cooked briefly and cooled, are the closest match; regular garden peas are too large and starchy for the balance here.
- A cup of walnuts is a lotOne cup of chopped walnut meats against one cup of chicken will dominate everything. Half a cup is enough, and toasting them briefly and cooling them improves the flavor considerably.
- Marinate means dress and waitToss the chicken, cucumber, walnuts and peas in French dressing and let them stand 20-30 minutes in the cold, not longer. Beyond that the cucumber weeps and the walnuts soften.
- Salt the cucumber firstPared and cubed cucumber releases a lot of water. Salting it for 15 minutes and patting it dry keeps the dressing from turning thin and milky on the plate.
- French Dressing, as this book means itFarmer's French Dressing is oil, vinegar or lemon, salt and pepper — in her own proportions roughly two parts oil to one part acid, whisked or shaken to combine. No mustard, no sugar, no emulsifier.
- Mayonnaise as garnish, not dressingThe mayonnaise goes on top in spoonfuls or piped down the center after the salad is arranged, so the two dressings stay distinct. Fold it in and the whole thing becomes a chicken salad, which is a different dish.
- Cold cooked chickenPoached breast or leftover roast, cut in half-inch cubes. About 5-6 oz of meat fills a cup.
- YieldServes about four as a first course or light lunch. The recipe says only to arrange it on a serving dish; lettuce leaves or cups are a common way to present such salads but are not called for here.
The name tells you almost nothing about Switzerland — in American cookbooks around 1900, dishes were routinely given European labels to signal refinement, and "Swiss" here probably points to the walnuts and the cucumber rather than to any actual Alpine source. What is genuinely of its moment is the structure: cold cooked poultry, a canned imported vegetable, nuts, and two separate dressings arranged for looks. Canned French peas were a modest luxury in American kitchens of the period, and the two-dressing finish reflects the era's fondness for salads built to be looked at before they were eaten. Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book ran a long list of these composed salads, some of them variations on the same arithmetic of one cup each.