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Macedoine Salad
Select a medium-sized carrot and turnip, peel and wash well, and cut them with a vegetable scoop. Put them into separate saucepans of boiling salted water and cook the carrot fifteen minutes and the turnip ten. Drain well, let them thoroughly cool, and place them in a salad-bowl with three tablespoonfuls of cooked peas, the same quantity of French beans cut into small pieces, one pinch of salt, one-half pinch of pepper, two tablespoonfuls of sweet oil and nearly two tablespoonfuls of vinegar. Mix al together well and turn it into a salad-bowl. Decorate the bowl with cooked cauliflower or a few asparagus tops or Brussels sprouts, and send to the table at once.
A cold dressed vegetable salad that depends entirely on cooking each vegetable separately and to its own point. The recipe is sound as written; only the vocabulary and a few timings need attention.
- Vegetable scoopA small hemispherical cutter, sold today as a Parisienne scoop or melon baller, usually 3/4 inch or smaller. The point is uniform pieces of carrot and turnip; a knife-cut 1/2-inch dice works if you have no scoop.
- Separate saucepansThis is the hinge. Carrot and turnip cook at different rates and turnip will muddy the water and dull the carrot's colour. Keep them apart, and salt both pans generously.
- TimingsFifteen minutes for carrot and ten for turnip is long for small scooped pieces; these are usually done in five to seven minutes for carrot and four to five for turnip. Test with a knife tip and pull them while they still have resistance.
- Cooling"Thoroughly cool" means cold, not warm. Drain and spread on a tray, or shock in ice water and dry well; residual heat will wilt the beans and thin the dressing.
- French beansThe British term for green beans. Cook them separately as well, three to four minutes, and cool them promptly if you want them green rather than olive.
- Sweet oilOlive oil. The dressing is a straight two parts oil to a scant two of vinegar, sharper than most modern vinaigrettes; use a wine vinegar and taste before adding all of it.
- A pinch of pepperHalf a pinch is a very small quantity, a scant 1/32 teaspoon at the usual reckoning of a pinch. White pepper suits the pale vegetables if you would rather not see black flecks.
- Yield and servingAs written this makes about two to three side servings. It is dressed at the last minute and sent out immediately for a reason: the vinegar will draw water from the vegetables and slacken the dressing within an hour.
Macédoine is French kitchen shorthand for a mixture of small, evenly cut vegetables or fruits, the name generally traced to Macedonia and the mixed peoples of Alexander's empire, a piece of eighteenth-century culinary wordplay that stuck. In time the term hardened into a technique: root vegetables scooped or diced to a uniform size, each blanched apart, then reassembled cold. It belongs to the French repertoire codified in the late nineteenth century, where a macédoine served as a cold hors d'oeuvre, a garnish for cold meats, or a foil to aspic work.