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Cucumber Salad
Peel and slice cucumbers; mix with salt, and let stand half an hour; mix two table-spoons sweet-oil or ham gravy with as much vinegar, and a tea-spoon sugar; add the cucumbers, which should be drained a little; add a tea-spoon pepper, and stir well. Sliced onions are an addition, if their flavor is liked. - Mrs. H. C. Mahncke.
A straightforward salted-and-dressed cucumber salad of the sort that appeared on Southern tables all summer. Two terms in it need translating, and one quantity should be scaled back.
- Sweet-oilSweet oil meant plain edible oil, usually olive, as opposed to lamp oil or medicinal oil. Any mild olive oil works; a neutral oil is a reasonable modern substitute.
- Ham gravyNot a thickened gravy but the warm rendered fat and pan juices from frying ham, akin to hot bacon dressings. Use about two tablespoons of drippings, warmed enough to be liquid, and expect a salad that sets slightly as it cools.
- Salting is the hingeThe half hour in salt draws out water so the dressing is not diluted. Drain well and blot the slices; the recipe's "drained a little" is the difference between a dressing and a puddle.
- The pepperA full teaspoon of pepper is aggressive by modern palates and probably reflects coarse, stale, weaker ground pepper. Start with a quarter teaspoon of freshly ground and adjust.
- VinegarCider vinegar is the period-appropriate choice in a Southern kitchen; white or wine vinegar both work. Equal parts oil and vinegar makes a sharp dressing, which is the point here.
- OnionSlice it paper-thin and, if you want it milder, rinse the slices in cold water and drain before adding. Sweet onion needs no such treatment.
- Yield and servingTwo or three medium cucumbers will take these quantities of dressing, serving roughly four as a side. Best eaten within an hour or two, while the slices still have some crispness.
Cucumbers salted, drained and dressed with oil and vinegar are a long-established vegetable preparation in English and American cookery, and the practice of drawing water out with salt appears in receipt books long before refrigeration made crisp cucumbers reliable. What marks this version as Southern is the alternative of ham gravy for the oil: pork fat was the everyday cooking medium in the region, and olive oil an imported luxury, so the same salad could be built from whatever the kitchen already had rendered. The Dixie Cook-Book, like many community compilations of the 1880s, often credits a contribution to the woman who sent it in, which is why a dressing this simple carries a name attached.