No. 2621

Asparagus Salad

Salade d'Asperges

Cut the tender parts of asparagus into pieces of equal length and tie them in bunches, then cook them in salted water and leave them to get cold. A few minutes before serving mix them in a bowl with a third of their quantity of pared crawfish tails; season with salt and pepper. Rub through a sieve the yolks of six hard-boiled eggs, dilute this with oil and vinegar, and pour over this sauce the asparagus and crawfish, then arrange the salad symmetrically in a salad bowl and add the seasoning to it.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A cold composed salad from Ranhofer's Delmonico's kitchen: blanched asparagus, shellfish, and a dressing built on sieved hard-boiled yolks rather than raw ones. The dressing quantity is the thing to watch — six yolks will sauce far more asparagus than most people intend to serve.

Scale the dressing to the plateThe recipe gives no asparagus quantity, and six sieved yolks thinned with oil and vinegar will sauce a great deal more than a small dish needs. For four people, two yolks with about 4 tablespoons oil and 1 to 2 teaspoons vinegar is a workable proportion; scale up from there.
The hinge: shock the asparagusRanhofer says only to cook in salted water and leave them to get cold. Drain and plunge into ice water instead, then dry thoroughly. Asparagus left to cool in its own heat turns olive-drab and slack, and wet spears will not hold the dressing.
Why the bunches are tiedTying keeps the spears straight and lets you lift the whole lot out at once so the tips do not overcook. Cut to equal lengths first; 3 to 4 minutes in well-salted boiling water for medium spears, less for thin.
"Pared crawfish tails"Pared here means shelled: the peeled tail meat of freshwater crayfish. Cooked crayfish tail meat is sold frozen; peeled cooked shrimp of similar size is the usual substitute. A third of the asparagus quantity by volume, so about 1 cup of tails to 3 cups of asparagus pieces.
Sieving the yolksPush the yolks through a fine-mesh sieve with the back of a spoon. Whisk the oil in gradually as you would for a mayonnaise, or the sauce breaks into grit and oil.
Oil and vinegarQuantities are not given here. Three parts oil to one of vinegar is the conventional proportion; a mild wine vinegar suits the shellfish better than cider.
Seasoning twiceThe recipe salts the asparagus and crawfish, then tells you to add seasoning again after arranging. That is deliberate — cold food mutes salt, and the final adjustment is made on the assembled bowl, not in the mixing.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of his long service as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this salad shows the house style plainly: French technique, French title, and an American abundance of shellfish. Crayfish — écrevisses — were a standard garnish in the classical French repertoire Ranhofer trained in, and they turn up here as casually as a garnish of parsley. The sieved hard-yolk dressing belongs to an older family of salad sauces that predates the general use of emulsified mayonnaise in home kitchens; the same treatment sprinkled loose over asparagus rather than worked into a sauce is generally what is meant by à la mimosa. Cooked salads occupy their own section in the book because a nineteenth-century service distinguished sharply between raw green salads, served with the roast, and these composed cold dishes, which could stand as a course of their own.