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Beef Salad
Take some lean cold boiled beef (the rump is preferable), remove all the fat and cut into pieces an inch and a half in length as thinly as possible. Put the pieces in a bowl, season with salt and pepper and two cooked and sliced potatoes, a little parsley, two tablespoonfuls of vinegar and some sweet oil. Compound well and arrange in a salad bowl, garnish with some pickles or beets, and serve.
A leftovers dish from the Waldorf kitchen, and one that depends almost entirely on how you slice the meat and how warm the potatoes are when you dress them.
- Sweet oilThis means olive oil, the mild table grade sold in nineteenth-century groceries under that name. Any decent olive oil works; a fruity, peppery one will dominate the beef.
- Cold boiled rumpRump here is the boiled beef of a pot-au-feu or a New England boiled dinner, simmered until tender and cooled in its liquid. Cold roast beef or brisket substitutes well; steak does not, as it goes dry and grainy when sliced cold.
- Slice against the grainThe instruction to cut inch-and-a-half pieces "as thinly as possible" is the hinge of the dish. Cut across the muscle fibres with a long thin blade, and chill the meat firm first so it does not tear.
- Dress the potatoes warmBoiled potatoes take up vinegar and oil much better while still warm. The recipe says only "two cooked and sliced potatoes," but slicing and dressing them before they go cold, then folding in the beef, keeps the seasoning from sitting on the surface and tasting sharp.
- ProportionsNo quantities are given for the beef, and none for the oil beyond "some." Two potatoes would suit roughly a pound of trimmed meat; if you take the conventional one-to-three dressing ratio as a starting point, the two tablespoons of vinegar would want five or six tablespoons of oil, but the text does not specify.
- VinegarCider or plain white wine vinegar is right for the period. A sharp distilled vinegar will overwhelm the beef at this ratio.
- OnionMany European versions of this salad include finely sliced onion or shallot, which Oscar does not call for. A small shallot, softened a few minutes in the vinegar, is a defensible addition.
- Yield and servingThe recipe states no quantity of beef; on the assumption of about a pound with the two potatoes, it would serve three or four as a lunch dish. Letting it stand half an hour before serving helps the meat take the dressing, and it is better cool than refrigerator-cold.
Beef salad is a standard European answer to the question of what to do with the meat left over from a boiled dinner: the French salade de boeuf, the Austrian and Bavarian Rindfleischsalat, built on cold simmered beef, potato, onion, vinegar and oil. Oscar Tschirky, who ran the Waldorf's dining rooms from 1893 and compiled this book in 1896, was Swiss-born, and the recipe reflects a working kitchen's thrift as much as any hotel menu. The garnish of pickles or beets is the same instinct at work — something sharp and cheap to lift a plate of cold meat. The details of the Waldorf's household economy are not documented here, but the dish itself is that kind of cooking.