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Kidney-Bean Salad
Combine one cup of cooked kidney-beans with one cup of crisp, tender summer cabbage, shredded.
Add one green sweet pepper, first removing the seeds and shredding it fine. Cover with French dressing No. 1 (see page 73), or mayonnaise dressing (see page 74) and serve at once.
A straightforward three-ingredient salad that depends entirely on the texture of what goes into it. A few notes on quantities and the dressings it refers to.
- YieldTwo cups of solids dressed lightly serves two as a side, or four as a small first course. It does not scale up gracefully once dressed, so mix only what will be eaten.
- The cooked beansThe recipe says only "cooked," presumably plain-boiled beans left from a previous meal. A 15-oz can, drained and rinsed well, gives roughly a cup and a half and works the same; rinsing matters because the canning liquid will turn the dressing cloudy and starchy.
- "Summer cabbage"An early, loose-headed cabbage with thin leaves, not the dense winter storage type. Pointed (sweetheart) cabbage is the closest match at a modern market; shred it fine and use the pale inner leaves.
- Green sweet pepperA whole bell pepper against two cups of other solids is assertive by current taste. Half a pepper is usually enough unless you want it forward, and trimming out the white ribs along with the seeds takes off some of the bitter edge.
- The dressings referencedFrench dressing No. 1 is not reproduced here; in books of this period the name usually means an oil-and-vinegar dressing, often around three or four parts oil to one of vinegar with salt, pepper and sometimes paprika, beaten until thick. The mayonnaise of the period is a raw-yolk emulsion; commercial mayonnaise substitutes directly.
- Why "serve at once"Salted dressing quickly draws water out of shredded cabbage and the bowl goes limp and watery. Shred, combine and dress at the last moment if you can.
- Worth addingBeans and cabbage give nothing acidic or sharp on their own. A little finely minced onion or a squeeze of lemon beyond the dressing keeps it from tasting flat.
Cookbooks devoted to using up leftovers were a recognisable genre in the American kitchen from the 1890s through the First World War, when thrift was framed as a matter of domestic science rather than hardship. Kidney beans were a common garden and dried-store bean in the United States, usually boiled soft and eaten hot, and their appearance in a cold salad with a French dressing sits with the period's growing enthusiasm for the salad course. The instruction to serve at once is best read as a texture warning: dressed shredded cabbage will not wait.