Marinade, Raw
Three tablespoons of oil, six of vinegar, one teaspoon of salt, one-half teaspoon of pepper and one-half teaspoon of onion juice. (If for fish use three tablespoons of vinegar and three of lemon juice.) Mix thoroughly. This is suitable for cooked meat or fish to be served in a salad. The onion juice may be omitted if desired.
A period vinaigrette under an older name: "raw" here means uncooked, as distinct from the boiled marinades of the same chapter. The proportions are the thing to notice before you mix it.
- The ratio is invertedTwo parts vinegar to one part oil is the reverse of the modern three-to-one vinaigrette, and it will taste sharp to a contemporary palate. That acidity is deliberate — the dressing is meant to penetrate and season already-cooked meat or fish rather than merely coat leaves — but if you are serving it as a table dressing, expect to reverse the proportions.
- Vinegar strengthHousehold vinegar of the period was not standardized to a single strength, and may have been weaker or stronger than today's 5 percent cider or white wine vinegar. Taste as you mix; you may want a spoonful less than called for.
- Oil"Oil" in a book of this date usually means olive oil, and probably a mild one rather than a green peppery extra-virgin. A neutral oil or a light olive oil sits closer to the intended flavor.
- Onion juiceExtract it by halving an onion and scraping the cut face with the tip of a spoon, or grate on a microplane and press the pulp through a fine sieve. The recipe calls for only half a teaspoon; a quarter of a medium onion yields roughly a teaspoon. Grated shallot works as well and is less aggressive.
- PepperHalf a teaspoon in nine tablespoons of dressing is a fairly assertive amount; freshly ground gives a cleaner heat than pre-ground pepper.
- For fishThe variation swaps half the vinegar for lemon juice, which is milder in acid and reads as fresher. Use it for shellfish and delicate white fish; keep the all-vinegar version for beef or tongue.
- Marinating timeThe recipe gives no time. Twenty to thirty minutes is enough to season cooked meat or fish before it goes into the salad; flaked fish left much longer will start to break down.
- YieldAbout nine tablespoons, a little over half a cup, enough to dress a pound of cooked meat or fish for four. It separates on standing; whisk or shake again just before using.
"Marinade" comes into English from the French mariner, to steep in brine, and behind that the Latin for sea, for water pickling: the first marinades were salt-water pickles for preserving fish. By the time of this book the word had loosened to mean any acid steeping liquid, and cookery writers of the period are often said to have distinguished a cooked marinade, simmered with aromatics and wine and used on raw meat before roasting or braising, from a raw one like this, mixed cold and used on food already cooked. Turn-of-the-century American cooking treated the vinaigrette not as a salad dressing in its own right but as a utility sauce, a way of reviving cold roast beef, boiled tongue or leftover poached fish and presenting it as a composed salad. The practical, waste-nothing logic of the entry is entirely of that world.