No. 2635

Italian Salad

Salade Italienne

Cook in salted water one pint of green peas, half a pint of string beans, half a pint of carrots and as much turnips, both of these pushed through a tin tube; they should be a quarter of an inch in diameter, and three eighths of an inch long. First blanch the carrots and turnips, then cook them in broth (No. 194a) with salt and sugar, and when done drain and leave them to get cool. Put into a salad bowl the carrots, green peas, some green peppers, string beans, turnips and finely cut-up chervil, tarragon, chives and finely chopped parsley; season with salt, pepper, vinegar and oil, mixed well together. Cut some beets and potatoes in an eighth of an inch thick slices, remove some rounds from these with a vegetable cutter three-quarters of an inch in diameter, then season; set the beetroots alternated with the potatoes around the base; near the top place a row of round slices of pickles half an inch in diameter; divide the height between the potatoes and the pickles with fillets of anchovies into six panels; in the center of these place a round slice of mortadelle and on the top lay some small channeled mushrooms (No. 118).

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's Italian salad is a dressed macédoine given a formal facing of cut vegetables, anchovy and sausage. The cooking is trivial; the work is entirely in the knife and the cutter, and the finished bowl only reads correctly if every piece is the same size.

The hinge: cook each vegetable separatelyPeas, beans, carrots and turnips all go in at different rates and the whole effect depends on each one being just done and still distinct. Cook them one at a time in salted water, drain, and spread them out to cool rather than piling them wet in a bowl.
"Pushed through a tin tube"This is a column cutter — a straight-sided tin tube driven through a thick slice of carrot or turnip to produce cylinders. A round pastry cutter of about 1/4 inch, or an apple corer for larger work, does the same job; failing that, square batons cut by hand at 1/4 by 1/4 by 3/8 inch look nearly as good.
Broth No. 194 aAny light unsalted chicken or vegetable stock serves; the salt and sugar Ranhofer adds are the point, since they season the root vegetables from the inside as they finish cooking.
Blanch, then glazeBlanch, then finish in broth -- Blanching the carrots and turnips in water first draws off their rawness and any bitterness in the turnip; they then finish cooking in the seasoned broth, and Ranhofer gives no time beyond 'when done'. Stop while they still hold a cylinder shape.
Green peppersThese are most likely sweet peppers rather than chillies. Use them raw and finely diced, a small amount, for colour and bite.
The dressingRanhofer gives no ratio: three parts oil to one of vinegar, whisked with salt and pepper, is a common ratio and about right here. Dress the vegetables while they are cool but not chilled, and give them twenty minutes to take up seasoning before you build the decoration.
Mortadelle and channeled mushroomsMortadelle is mortadella, cut in thin rounds. "Channeled" mushrooms are turned mushrooms — small white caps scored in curved flutes with the tip of a paring knife, cooked briefly in acidulated water to keep them white. Plain small caps are an honest substitute if the knife work defeats you.
Assembly and yieldThe recipe's 'base', 'height' and 'top' imply the dressed vegetables are mounded into a dome in the bowl, with the sliced garnishes pressed against its face: beet and potato rounds alternating at the base, pickle rounds near the top, anchovy fillets running up the slope to divide the sides into six panels. Build it no more than an hour ahead or the beet will bleed into the potato. Ranhofer gives no yield; the quantities suggest roughly six to eight as a first course.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's for some three decades, though not continuously, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire set down in print. "Italian salad" here has little to do with Italy beyond the mortadella: in nineteenth-century French service, a salade italienne meant a macédoine of cooked vegetables cut to uniform shapes and dressed, close cousin to the salade russe that took mayonnaise instead of vinaigrette. The elaborate facing of beet and potato rounds, anchovy panels and fluted mushrooms belongs to a style of dining in which cold dishes were sent whole to the sideboard or buffet and were expected to be looked at before they were eaten. The column cutter and the vegetable cutter that make it possible were standard tin-shop goods in a professional kitchen of the period, and using them took a good many hands.