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Bacon Salad
Cut some slices of fat bacon into small squares, put them into a fryingpan and fry them until lightly browned. Remove the pan from the fire and mix in one-third vinegar to two-thirds bacon oil. Prepare a salad by chopping up whatever green meats happen to be at hand, season it and pour the bacon sauce over it; if the pieces of bacon are not wanted strain the sauce through a strainer. Beaten eggs may be added to the bacon fat if desired. They should be stirred into it while over the fire till the dressing is thick, then allow the mixture to become cool before pouring it over the salad.
A hot bacon-fat dressing of the kind that turns a bowl of greens into a course. The proportions are given as ratios rather than measures, so scale to the amount of fat your bacon renders.
- "Green meats"An older usage for green vegetables — greens generally, not meat. Read it as whatever leaves are at hand: dandelion, escarole, spinach, romaine, chicory. Sturdy, slightly bitter leaves stand up to hot fat far better than delicate lettuces, which collapse to nothing.
- The ratioOne-third vinegar to two-thirds bacon fat by volume. Slices of fat bacon rendered down yield roughly 2 tablespoons of fat per 4 slices, so about 4 slices plus 1 tablespoon vinegar dresses a large bowl for four. Cider or wine vinegar suits it; distilled white is harsh at this concentration.
- Off the fire firstThe instruction to remove the pan before adding vinegar is the one that matters. Vinegar hitting screaming-hot fat spits violently, and some of the acid drives off as steam. Pull the pan, wait a beat, then pour.
- Dress hot, serve at onceBacon fat congeals as it cools, so the dressing has to go onto the greens hot and the salad has to reach the table immediately. Warm the bowl if it has been sitting in a cold kitchen.
- The egg versionAdding beaten eggs makes this a cooked dressing rather than a vinaigrette, and it needs low heat and constant stirring or it scrambles. Two eggs to a half cup of fat and vinegar is a workable proportion. Stir until it coats a spoon, then take it off — this is a custard, and it will curdle from residual heat if left in the pan.
- Cool the egg dressing, not the plain oneOscar is specific that the egg mixture cools before it meets the greens; only the straight fat-and-vinegar dressing goes on hot. A hot egg dressing keeps thickening on the leaves and turns pasty.
- SeasoningSalt lightly. The bacon and its browned bits bring salt already, and the amount varies with the cure. Coarse black pepper and a spoonful of the pan's browned bits are the whole seasoning this needs.
- Bacon"Fat bacon" here means bacon with a high proportion of white fat, cut thick and diced — not the thin, water-plumped supermarket sort, which renders little and browns unevenly. A slab of unsliced bacon cut into lardons is closest to the intent.
Hot bacon dressings on bitter greens are older than any restaurant kitchen and run through German and Alsatian cooking, arriving in America with Pennsylvania German households where wilted dandelion or lettuce salad was a spring dish, made when the first greens came up and there was still bacon in the cellar. The recipe is written as a technique rather than a formula, for a cook who will look at what came in that morning and decide. The instruction to strain out the bacon if it is not wanted, and the optional egg thickening, allow one dressing to be served several ways.