No. 2639

Mazarin Salad

Salade a la Mazarin

Boil in salted water two heads of celery knobs; let them get cold, then cut them up into fine slices, and with an inch diameter column tube (Fig. 168) remove all that it is possible to obtain, then range the pieces in a salad bowl. Cut the white ends of two celery stalks into pieces one and a half inches long, wash them well, and split them finely lengthwise; lay them in cold water for half an hour. Drain them off, and add to them the celery knob in the salad bowl, also eight ounces of cooked truffles cut into pieces the same size as the knobs. Season with salt, pepper, oil and vinegar, and mix well by tossing them in the bowl in such a way as not to break the truffles. Pound four hard-boiled egg-yolks, rub them through a sieve, add to them a tablespoonful of mustard, half a pint of oil and a little vinegar; mix this in with the celery and truffles; range it in the bowl for the table, and sprinkle over some chopped chervil, chives and tarragon.

← No. 2638 Lobster or Spiny Lobster Salad, American Sty Cooked Salads No. 2640 Mirabeau Salad →

For the Modern Kitchen

A composed celery-and-truffle salad from Ranhofer's Delmonico's repertoire, bound with a sauce made from sieved hard-boiled yolks rather than raw ones. Nothing here is difficult; the obstacles are vocabulary and the price of truffles.

"Celery knobs" are celeriacTwo medium celery roots, peeled and boiled in salted water until a knife slides in easily — roughly 25 to 35 minutes depending on size. Cool them completely before slicing or they crumble under the cutter.
The column tubeA plain round cutter about an inch across. Ranhofer has you cut the cooled celeriac into fine slices and punch out discs from them; the trimmings are not wasted, they go to soup. The point is uniform rounds that match the truffle pieces.
Crisping the celerySplitting the white stalk ends lengthwise and soaking them in cold water for half an hour makes them curl and turn brittle. Ice water works faster. Drain them thoroughly or the dressing will slacken.
Eight ounces of trufflesThat quantity of black truffle now costs more than the rest of the meal several times over. "Cooked truffles" is all Ranhofer says; elsewhere in the book truffles are commonly cooked in wine or stock. A tablespoon of good truffle peelings folded through, or a substitution of cooked black trumpet or roasted cremini cut into rounds, keeps the structure of the dish intact even if it is no longer the same luxury.
Half a pint of oilOne cup. Work it into the sieved yolks and mustard a little at a time, as for mayonnaise; cooked yolks emulsify less willingly than raw, so patience matters, and a teaspoon of the vinegar early on helps it take. The finished sauce should coat, not pool.
Two dressings, in sequenceThe vegetables are first tossed with plain oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, then the yolk sauce is folded in. Do not skip the first step — it seasons the celeriac from the outside in, which the thick sauce cannot do.
HandlingToss by lifting the bowl rather than stirring with a spoon. Ranhofer's instruction not to break the truffles applies equally to whatever you use in their place.
Herbs and yieldChervil, chives and tarragon go on at the last moment; chervil is delicate and fades quickly once dressed. Ranhofer gives no yield; on these quantities the salad would serve roughly six to eight as a course on its own.

A Little History

Dishes and garnitures called à la Mazarin honour Cardinal Jules Mazarin, chief minister of France under the young Louis XIV and a byword for expensive taste; by the nineteenth century the name attached itself, somewhat loosely, to preparations involving fine moulded shapes or costly trimmings rather than to any single fixed formula. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York and author of The Epicurean (1894), catalogued dozens of such named salads, and this one shows exactly how the genre worked: cheap winter root vegetables cut into geometrically perfect discs, then lifted into the luxury class by eight ounces of truffle and half a pint of oil.