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Spinach Salad
By the addition of a few hard-cooked eggs a cup of left-over creamed spinach can be made into an attractive luncheon salad. The spinach must be chopped very fine and moistened with a little white sauce No. 4 (see page 68). Form into balls the size of walnuts. Set away to chill. When ready to serve, slice rather thick as many hardcooked eggs as needed; season them with salt and paprika. Mix them with the spinach-balls and pour mayonnaise dressing over all. Serve on heart lettuce leaves.
Lettuce leaves Cooked carrots Salt and pepper
A thrift salad that depends entirely on the spinach being stiff enough to hold a shape. Everything else is assembly.
- The hinge: a very thick binderThe hinge: a stiff binder -- the recipe sends you to "White sauce No. 4" on page 68, so check what that page actually specifies; for balls to hold, it needs to be a thick sauce that sets when cold. Use only enough to bind; creamed spinach loosened with a pouring sauce will not form balls at all.
- Chop, then squeezeLeft-over creamed spinach is usually wetter than the recipe assumes. Chop it very fine and press out excess liquid in a sieve or towel before adding any sauce, or chill it uncovered for an hour.
- Chilling is not optionalThe balls need at least an hour in the refrigerator, uncovered on a plate, to firm up. Rolled warm they slump into the dressing.
- Hard-cooked eggs"Rather thick" is undefined; something around a quarter inch works. Cook the eggs, cool them fully, and slice with a wet knife or an egg slicer; warm eggs crumble.
- Mayonnaise of the periodHome-made mayonnaise here would have been raw-yolk. Commercial jarred mayonnaise is acidified and behaves the same on the plate; either works, and a boiled dressing is the period alternative.
- The stray ingredient list"Lettuce leaves / Cooked carrots / Salt and pepper" at the end reads as a fragment of an adjacent recipe rather than part of this one. Ignore the carrots unless you want them.
- YieldA cup of spinach, once bound, gives a dozen or so walnut-sized balls; enough for a light luncheon for two, or more as a first course depending on how many eggs you slice in.
Books of left-overs multiplied in English and American kitchens between about 1890 and 1920, when domestic science took the thrift of the ordinary household and gave it a method and a page number. The cross-reference to a numbered white sauce is the signature of that movement, though what the numbering stood for is not explained on the page. The dish itself is less a salad than a demonstration of the era's fondness for reshaping food ported and balled things which turned yesterday's supper into something that could be set before guests without apology. Spinach was a natural candidate, since creamed spinach was a standing side dish and reheats poorly.