No. 2636

Japanese Salad

Salade Japonaise

Cook some peeled potatoes in broth (No. 194a), cut two pounds of them in slices while still warm, and season them with salt, pepper, olive oil, vinegar, also half a pint of white wine, some chervil, chives, tarragon, shallot, parsley and burnet, all finely and separately chopped up. Cook some mussels with minced onions, branches of celery, mignonette, but no salt, adding a little vinegar and water; set them on a good fire, toss them frequently, and when done so that they open take them from the shells and cut away their foot or black appendage. Put the potatoes into a bowl with one pound of the mussels, or else very small clams may be substituted, stir them up lightly, and dress in a salad bowl, covering the surface with slices of truffles cooked in champagne. Set the salad in a cold place for one hour, and when serving it mix in the truffles.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A warm-dressed potato and shellfish salad from Ranhofer's Delmonico kitchen, more assembly than cookery. The order of operations is the whole recipe: the potatoes must absorb the wine and oil while they are still hot.

Dress the potatoes warmSlice and season them the moment they can be handled. Cold potato takes up almost none of the wine or vinegar, and the dish depends on that absorption for its flavour.
Which potatoUse a waxy variety — fingerling, La Ratte, Charlotte or a red-skinned boiling potato. A floury baking potato will collapse into paste when tossed with the mussels.
"Broth (No. 194a)"Ranhofer cross-references one of his own broths; which one is not something that can be confirmed from this page. Any unsalted or lightly salted light chicken or veal stock will do; the point is that the potatoes cook in something savoury rather than plain water. Season carefully afterward, since the stock and the mussel liquor both carry salt.
Half a pint of white wineOne cup. The recipe specifies only white wine; anything dry and unoaked works. Ranhofer lists the oil and vinegar before the wine, and the whole seasoning goes on while the potatoes are still warm.
MignonetteCoarsely cracked white or black peppercorns, not the pink onion-vinegar sauce that goes with raw oysters today. It flavours the mussel liquor.
Cooking the musselsFive to seven minutes over high heat, covered, shaking the pan. They are done as they open; discard any that stay shut. The instruction to add no salt is deliberate — mussel liquor is already saline.
The "foot or black appendage"This is the byssus, the beard. Pull it out after cooking, along with any grit. Mussels in the shell yield only about a quarter to a third of their weight in meat, so expect to need three to four pounds in the shell for the pound the recipe calls for.
Truffles in champagneAn 1890s luxury flourish that most cooks will skip. A small jarred black truffle warmed in a splash of dry sparkling wine gives the effect; canned truffle peelings will not, and truffle oil is a different thing entirely.
Resting and yieldThe hour in a cold place lets the seasoning settle — do not stir the truffles in until service, as the recipe says, or their aroma disperses. Two pounds of potatoes with a pound of mussels serves six to eight as a first course.

A Little History

The name has nothing to do with Japan. The salad is generally traced to Alexandre Dumas fils' play Francillon, first staged at the Comédie-Française in 1887, in which a character dictates the recipe on stage: potatoes cooked in bouillon and sliced warm, mussels, wine poured over while hot, truffles on top. The salad is called a Japanese salad, and Parisian restaurants served it under both that name and salade Francillon — a fashion helped along by the vogue for all things Japanese in France in the 1880s. Charles Ranhofer, running Delmonico's in New York, gives a version here that is close to the stage original with the addition of burnet and shallot and the option of substituting small clams for mussels, a sensible concession to American markets.