No. 2675

Cos Lettuce Salad

Salade de Romaine

Remove all the green leaves until the yellow ones are reached; wipe each leaf well, and split them lengthwise, then cut into two-inch long pieces, continuing as far as the heart; split it in four; place in a salad bowl and season the salad with chervil, tarragon, all finely cut, egg-yolks (one egg for two persons) and dilute with eight spoonfuls of oil and two of vinegar; add salt, pepper and green mustard; mix well when ready to serve. The egg-yolks may be suppressed.

← No. 2674 Monk's Beard Salad Green Salads No. 2676 Water Cress and Apple Salad and Nonpareil [c →

For the Modern Kitchen

A plain French romaine salad from Ranhofer's Delmonico's kitchen, built on a 4:1 oil-to-vinegar dressing enriched with egg yolk. The only real decisions are how you read "spoonfuls" and what the egg yolks are meant to be.

The hinge: dry leaves"Wipe each leaf well" is not fussiness. An oil dressing this lean will slide off wet lettuce and pool at the bottom of the bowl; dry the leaves thoroughly, in a towel or spinner, before they meet the oil.
Cos is romaineSame plant. Ranhofer's instruction to strip away all the green leaves down to the yellow ones suggests heads with more outer green than a modern romaine heart, where you will be discarding much less; the pale inner leaves are what you want.
SpoonfulsRead these as tablespoons: about eight of oil to two of vinegar, roughly half a cup of oil. The proportion matters more than the absolute amount -- four parts oil to one of vinegar is milder than a modern 3:1.
The egg yolksThe recipe does not say whether the yolks are raw or hard-cooked. Hard-cooked yolks, mashed and worked into the oil, will thicken it; a raw yolk gives a looser, mayonnaise-like coating, in which case use pasteurized eggs. One yolk per two people. The recipe itself notes the yolks "may be suppressed" -- that is, left out -- leaving a straight vinaigrette.
Green mustardNot a product you can readily buy now. It most likely refers to a prepared mustard coloured and flavoured with herbs, such as tarragon. A good Dijon, with the tarragon already in the salad, gets you there; a teaspoon is enough.
HerbsChervil and tarragon, both cut fine and added raw at the last moment. Chervil's anise note fades quickly once chopped, so do it just before mixing. Chives or a little parsley will stand in, though the flavour shifts.
Dress at the table"Mix well when ready to serve" is the operative timing. Romaine hearts hold up better than most lettuce, but salted and oiled leaves begin to slump within ten minutes.
YieldThe recipe does not state a yield; scale it by Ranhofer's rule of one egg yolk per two diners.

A Little History

Cos lettuce takes its English name from the Greek island of Kos, and its French and American name, romaine, from Rome -- traditionally traced to the lettuce grown for the papal court, though the connection is repeated more often than it is documented. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York and author of The Epicurean (1894), gives green salads their own short section of terse, almost telegraphic entries, and this one sits between monk's beard and watercress with apple: a reminder that a fashionable American restaurant of the 1890s expected to keep a range of distinct salad greens on hand. The egg-yolk dressing is the older French manner, predating bottled mayonnaise and creamy dressings, and Ranhofer's willingness to "suppress" the yolks marks the point at which such a salad becomes the plain oil-and-vinegar vinaigrette still served with romaine today.