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Fish and Potato Salad
Use for this salad any left-over white fish, baked, boiled, broiled, or sautéd, being careful to remove all bones. For each cup of flaked fish use one cup of potatoes cut in dice. Mix with French dressing No. I (see page 73), pouring it over fish and potato separately. If potato is freshly boiled and warm when dressing is added, seasoning will penetrate potato more easily, giving better flavor. When ready to put salad together, drain off any excess of liquid, add chopped sweet red peppers (canned), and mix carefully, that potato may keep its shape. Season more highly if necessary. Serve in individual portions on crisp lettuceleaves, putting a spoonful of mayonnaise dressing (see page 84) on top of each. Garnish with narrow strips of red peppers.
A cold composed salad built from two things dressed separately, which is the whole point of it. The technique holds up; only the pantry references need translating.
- Dress the potato warmThis is the hinge. Vinaigrette poured over potatoes still hot from the pot is absorbed rather than shed, and cold potato will simply stay bland. Cut the dice while the potatoes are warm, dress immediately, and let them sit while you prepare the fish.
- French dressing No. IIn books of this period such a heading usually means a simple oil-and-vinegar dressing with salt and pepper, shaken or whisked to a temporary emulsion; proportions vary from roughly two to three parts oil to one of vinegar, and some period versions add mustard or paprika. The recipe on page 73 will give the book's own version. The modern bottled American "French dressing" is a different and later product.
- Canned sweet red peppersThese are pimientos, sold in jars or small cans. Roasted red peppers from a jar are the closest current equivalent; drain them well, since their packing liquid will loosen the salad.
- Which fish"White fish" here means lean white-fleshed fish generally — cod, haddock, hake, halibut, pollock — not the Great Lakes whitefish. Oily fish such as salmon or mackerel will work but will dominate the dressing.
- Handling the leftoversCooked fish kept refrigerated should be used within two or three days, and this salad is served cold throughout, so nothing gets a second cook. Flake it over a plate and go through it with your fingers for pin bones.
- Draining before assemblyBoth components will weep. Tip them into a sieve for a few minutes before combining, or the mayonnaise on top will slide off into a pink puddle.
- Proportion and yieldProportion -- equal cups of flaked fish and diced potato is the whole formula, so scale to whatever fish you have. The original gives no yield; a cup of each will serve one or two on lettuce.
- Season at the endPotato absorbs salt invisibly and cold food tastes flatter than warm. The original says only to "season more highly if necessary"; taste after mixing and correct as needed.
Books of "left-overs" were a recognisable genre in American and British household publishing, and they organise themselves by the raw material in the larder rather than by course. A fish and potato salad is one of the oldest answers to cold cooked fish in the Anglo-American kitchen, and here the potato stretches an expensive protein while the acid of the dressing revives flesh that has already been cooked once. The instruction to dress the two elements separately and the finishing spoonful of mayonnaise both suggest a salad built and garnished as an individual plated portion rather than tossed in a bowl. Canned pimientos, called for here without comment, were probably still a fairly new convenience — commercial canning of sweet peppers is generally said to have grown rapidly in the early twentieth century — and they turn up constantly in salads of this era wherever a cook wanted colour in winter.