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Chicken Salad
Fat fowls make the best salad. Rub the chicken with salt and pepper, place one small onion and one bay leaf inside, wrap with napkin, tie securely, and steam for three hours, or until a fork can be easily turned round in the meat. When the chicken is cold, cut the breast into not too small pieces with a knife, and sprinkle with French dressing. The dark meat should not be used if a pretty salad is desired. To two cups of chicken, allow one of coarsely chopped celery, or more if liked, and keep the celery crisp until wanted. Make a mayonnaise dressing, stir part of it into the celery, and place the latter on a thin layer of lettuce, or else arrange it directly upon the salad dish, and dispose the tips of the celery prettily about the edge. Heap the chicken mixture in the center, pour over it the remainder of the mayonnaise, and garnish with white celery tops, beets cut in dice, capers, cold, hard boiled yolks of eggs that have been pressed through a colander, or any other ornament that pleases the fancy.
A composed salad from the era when a boiling fowl was a distinct item at the butcher's. Most of the updating here concerns the bird itself and the handling of cooked chicken in a warm kitchen.
- "Fat fowls"Probably a mature, well-fattened bird of the kind now sold as a stewing hen or boiling fowl, generally heavier and richer in gelatin than a young bird. A supermarket roaster works, but expect it to be tender well before the stated time.
- The three hoursThree hours of steaming suits a tough old hen; a modern roaster will be done in 60-90 minutes. Use the book's own test rather than the clock: a fork should turn easily in the meat.
- The napkinA clean linen napkin, tied on, presumably to hold the bird's shape and keep the aromatics in place. Cheesecloth does the same job, or skip the wrapping and steam the bird in a covered pot on a rack above simmering water.
- Cooling the chickenThe hinge of the recipe. Cooked chicken must be cooled quickly and refrigerated, not left on the counter to come to room temperature over an afternoon; cut it once it is cold and keep the finished salad chilled until it goes to the table.
- French dressingAt this date, a simple vinaigrette of oil, vinegar, salt and pepper; proportions varied from book to book. Note that the recipe has you sprinkle it over the breast once the bird is cold, as a seasoning step; the mayonnaise comes later.
- MayonnaiseThe period expects it made by hand from raw yolks. If it is going to sit on a buffet, or be served to anyone very young, elderly or pregnant, use pasteurized eggs or a good commercial mayonnaise.
- The dark meatOmitted purely for appearance, since the pale breast looked better under white dressing. There is no culinary reason to discard it; keep the legs for another dish if the look of the salad matters to you.
- Celery"Keep the celery crisp" simply means hold it cold until wanted; ice water works, but drain it thoroughly. Wet celery thins the mayonnaise and the salad weeps on the plate.
- YieldTwo cups of chicken with one of celery serves four as a lunch course, or six when it is one dish among several. A 5 lb fowl yields considerably more than two cups of breast meat, so scale up or plan a second use.
Chicken salad in this dressed, mayonnaise-bound form was long a fixture of American ladies' luncheons, church suppers and hotel menus, and its appearance in a Butterick book is suggestive: the company sold dress patterns, and its cookbook seems to have been aimed at the woman running a household with an eye on appearances as much as on economy. Hence the instructions that have nothing to do with flavor -- discard the dark meat, arrange the celery tips prettily, press hard-boiled yolk through a colander for a fine golden crumb. The recipe also assumes the older kitchen logic in which a tough boiling fowl was simmered or steamed for hours and then used cold, so that one bird supplied both broth and a company dish. Celery, now unremarkable, was still a slightly fashionable vegetable in this period, often served on its own in a tall glass celery vase, which is part of why it is treated here as an ornament as well as an ingredient.