No. 2634

Imperial Salad

Salade Imperiale

Cut off some green asparagus tops one inch in length; cook them in salted water in an untinned copper basin; drain and lay them in a bowl, seasoning with salt, pepper, oil and vinegar. Cut some cooked truffles into large Julienne the same length as the asparagus, season them the same, and half an hour later lay them on top of a sieve to drain well, then add them to the asparagus and mingle them both with a mayonnaise sauce (No. 606), having a little mustard added.

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For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

A two-ingredient composed salad from Ranhofer's Delmonico's kitchen, where the technique is nearly all of it. Two points need attention before anything else: the copper basin and the double seasoning.

Skip the untinned copperCooking green vegetables in bare copper was a nineteenth-century trick for fixing a vivid green, and it works because copper ions bind to the chlorophyll. It also leaches copper into the food, more so with salt and any acidity. Blanch the tips in a stainless or enamelled pan of well-salted water and shock them in ice water instead; the colour holds well enough for a salad.
Asparagus timingOne-inch tips of green asparagus need two to four minutes in boiling salted water depending on thickness. The original assumes you will judge it; err short, since the tips continue to soften while they drain and marinate.
The marinade is the pointAsparagus and truffle are each seasoned separately with salt, pepper, oil and vinegar; the truffles are left half an hour and then laid on a sieve to drain well before being added and the mayonnaise goes on. Do not shortcut this into a single toss. Draining keeps the vinegar from thinning the sauce into a slick.
Julienne of truffleRanhofer's "cooked truffles" would be black truffle, cooked before use; the recipe does not say how. Preserved black truffle in a jar is the closest practical substitute. Truffle oil is not a substitute here, since the dish depends on the texture of the strips against the asparagus.
Sauce No. 606The cross-reference is to Ranhofer's plain mayonnaise, made with raw yolks, oil, vinegar or lemon, salt and pepper. Any well-made mayonnaise stands in. The added mustard is not decoration; it carries the sauce against the truffle.
Quantities and yieldNo amounts are given, in keeping with the book's professional audience. The original matches the truffle julienne to the asparagus in length only, and says nothing about proportion; truffle at modern prices usually means a scattering. As a working guide, about a pound of asparagus tips dressed with half a cup of mayonnaise serves six as a first course.
ServingServe cold, mounded, the same day it is dressed. The mayonnaise loosens and the asparagus dulls overnight.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the "Cooked Salads" chapter is where the kitchen's cold larder shows off. Imperial, Royal, Princess and similar names attached themselves in this period to many compositions built on expensive ingredients rather than to fixed formulas; here the imperial element is plainly the truffle, priced far above the asparagus it accompanies. The untinned copper basin was widely used for green vegetables in French cookery of the era, one of several practices, along with copper-greened pickles, that later food chemists argued out of the kitchen. The dish also reflects a shift in American dining that Delmonico's is often credited with helping to drive: salad as a constructed, sauced course served cold, rather than an afterthought of raw leaves.