No. 2625

Chicken Salad, American Style—Chicken Mayonnaise

Salade de Poulet a l' Americaine--Mayonnaise de Poulet

Cook a four-pound chicken in some stock (No. 194a); the time allowed for this varies considerably, according to the age of the chicken, but the usual length of time is about two hours. When the chicken is done put it into a vessel, pour its own broth over, and let it cool therein; remove it, and begin by lifting off all the skin and white parts from the breasts; cut the meat into dice from five to six-eighths of an inch, and lay them in a bowl, seasoning with salt, pepper oil and vinegar. Chicken salad may be prepared either with lettuce or celery, the latter being generally preferred. Choose fine white celery, wash it well, drain and cut it across in one-eighth of an inch thick pieces or else in Julienne; dry them in a cloth to absorb all the water remaining in them. Put at the bottom of a salad bowl intended for the table some salt, pepper, oil and vinegar; mustard can be added if desired; mix the seasoning in with the celery. For lettuce prepare an ordinary lettuce salad. Lay the pieces of chicken on top, and cover the whole with a layer of mayonnaise sauce (No. 606); decorate the surface with quartered hard-boiled eggs, anchovy fillets, olives, capers and beets; place some lettuce leaves around, and a fine lettuce heart in the center.

Chicken Mayonnaise.—Cut into five pieces a roasted chicken weighing two pounds and a half, remove the skin and pare nicely. Season the chicken the same as for No. 2625; two hours later toss it in the vessel with jellied mayonnaise (No. 613) and dress it pyramidically without any green salad; cover with jelly mayonnaise, and garnish around with halved eggs, olives capers, anchovies, beetroots and chopped jelly.

← No. 2624 Capon Salad a la Mortimer Cooked Salads No. 2626 Mignon Salad →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a Delmonico's larder: a numbered stock, a numbered mayonnaise, and a numbered jellied mayonnaise, all made elsewhere in the book. The dish is simple once those are in hand, but two of his numbers — the poaching time and the two-hour rest — need rethinking.

Poaching timeTwo hours suited a mature fowl of the 1890s. A modern 4-lb supermarket chicken is a young bird and will be done in 50 to 70 minutes at a bare simmer, or when the thickest part of the thigh reaches 165F. Two hours will leave the breast dry and stringy, which is precisely the part this salad is built on.
Cooling in the brothThis is the hinge of the recipe and worth keeping. Letting the bird cool submerged in its own liquid keeps the breast moist and seasons it through. Get the pot into the refrigerator once it stops steaming rather than leaving it on the counter, and lift the chicken out cold.
The stock and the mayonnaiseNo. 194a is one of Ranhofer's stock recipes, given elsewhere in the book; a good unsalted chicken stock, or water with an onion, carrot, celery and a few peppercorns, does the same work. No. 606 is his mayonnaise sauce. Because nothing here is cooked after the sauce goes on, use pasteurized eggs or a good jarred mayonnaise, and keep the finished bowl refrigerated until it goes to table.
Jellied mayonnaiseNo. 613 is mayonnaise stiffened with melted aspic or clear meat jelly so it sets on the chicken and holds a shape. Modern equivalent: dissolve powdered gelatin in a little warm stock, cool it to lukewarm, and whisk it into the mayonnaise, then use it before it sets. The "chopped jelly" in the garnish is set aspic diced with a knife.
Dice sizeFive to six-eighths of an inch is a little over half an inch to three-quarters — knuckle-sized cubes, not shreds. The meat is cut, not pulled.
The two-hour restIn the Chicken Mayonnaise variant the seasoned chicken sits two hours before the jellied mayonnaise is added. Do that rest in the refrigerator, covered, not at room temperature.
CelerySliced an eighth of an inch across, or cut in fine julienne, then dried thoroughly in a towel. The drying matters: wet celery thins the mayonnaise and slackens the whole bowl within minutes.
YieldA 4-lb bird with celery and garnish serves six to eight as a luncheon salad. The smaller roasted chicken in the second version, cut in five pieces and dressed pyramidically, serves four.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894, and the title of this entry shows him working in two registers at once: the French kitchen name, salade de poulet, and the American thing it had become. Chicken salad is often said to have been a fixture of American church suppers, hotel lunch counters and ladies' luncheons since at least the mid-century, and celery — not lettuce — was already understood as the correct partner, as Ranhofer states plainly when he notes that celery is generally preferred. What separates his version from the domestic one is the finish: the mayonnaise poured over as a sealing layer, the ring of anchovy, olive, caper and beet, the lettuce heart standing in the middle. That is the vocabulary of the nineteenth-century buffet, where cold dishes were built to be looked at down the length of a table before anyone served themselves. The second half of the entry, the Chicken Mayonnaise, goes further into that world: bound with mayonnaise set firm with aspic so it could be moulded into a pyramid and hold its shape through a long service, a technique that has largely disappeared from home kitchens along with the meat jelly it depended on.