No. 2674

Monk's Beard Salad

Salade de Barbe de Capucin

This salad is very much liked and is exceedingly wholesome. Clean it well by wiping the leaves with a towel--do not wash it; season with salt, pepper, oil and vinegar, adding a few slices of beetroot.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A three-line salad that depends entirely on the green itself. The instructions are complete as written; what needs translating is the produce.

What barbe de capucin isNot the Italian agretti sometimes sold as monk's beard, but chicory roots forced in the dark, producing long pale-yellow leaves with a clean bitterness. Belgian endive, Catalogna chicory or the loose forced chicory sold as barba di cappuccino are the closest substitutes; escarole hearts will do at a pinch.
Do not wash itForced chicory is grown in sand or soil in the dark, and the blanched leaves bruise and keep badly once wet. Wipe each leaf with a dry towel and pick out grit at the base. If the heads are genuinely sandy, rinse as briefly as possible and dry thoroughly, then chill.
Proportions for the dressingThe book gives none. Three parts oil to one of vinegar, salted before the oil goes in, suits the bitterness; a mild red wine vinegar works better here than a sharp white.
The beetrootCooked beets, sliced thin, are almost certainly what is meant; raw beetroot was rarely served at table in this period. Add them at the last moment or the whole bowl turns pink.
Dress at the tableBitter chicory wilts fast in acid and salt. Toss immediately before serving, and use your hands rather than tongs so the long leaves are not bruised.
YieldTwo good heads of forced chicory will dress a salad for about four. The book gives no yield and no service note; this appears simply within its Green Salads section.

A Little History

Barbe de capucin — Capuchin's beard — is the French market name for wild chicory roots lifted in autumn and forced in darkness, so the new leaves grow long, blanched and only faintly bitter; the name is generally traced to the shape of the pale straggling leaves and the friars' beards. The technique was a staple of nineteenth-century French winter market gardening, when forced chicory, endive and dandelion were among the main sources of fresh salad greens between November and March. Charles Ranhofer, a Frenchman running the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York, catalogued many of these green salads in 1894 with the same brevity: the cooking is nothing, the sourcing is everything. His insistence that the leaves be wiped rather than washed is the mark of a cook who had handled sandy forced chicory and knew what water does to it.