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Chicken Salad (V)
Mrs. Parmelee.
Boil one chicken tender, then take the meat and chop up, take two tablespoons of mustard, three eggs boiled hard, chop the whites with the chickens, the yolks rub up fine with the mustard, one tablespoon of salt, three tablespoons melted butter, one tablespoon black pepper, vinegar enough to moisten it, chop three heads of celery to one chicken, mix all together and serve.
A yolk-and-mustard dressing rather than a mayonnaise, built in the bowl as the salad is tossed. The seasonings as written are heavy by modern taste and the celery is measured in whole bunches.
- "Boil one chicken tender"Boil until tender, not hard. Poach the bird in barely simmering salted water until the thigh reads 165F, and let it cool in its own broth so the breast does not dry. A hard boil toughens the meat and clouds the stock.
- Three heads of celeryA "head" is what a supermarket sells as a bunch. Three bunches to one chicken gives a salad that is more celery than meat; two bunches, chopped small, is closer to modern proportions.
- The mustard is ambiguousTwo tablespoons could be dry English mustard powder or a prepared mustard, and the recipe does not say. Rubbed into hard yolks it behaves like powder, but two tablespoons of powder is fierce; start with one and taste.
- Salt and pepperA tablespoon of salt and a tablespoon of black pepper are aggressive quantities, presumably intended for a large platter of salad. Add half, mix, and correct at the end.
- Melted butterButter sets hard once the salad is chilled and leaves a waxy coating on the celery. Either serve the salad at cool room temperature, or substitute a neutral oil.
- Vinegar enough to moistenThe recipe does not say which; cider vinegar is a plausible choice. Work it in a spoonful at a time into the yolk-mustard paste before it meets the chicken, so the dressing stays smooth rather than pooling in the bottom of the bowl.
- Yield and servingOne chicken with this much celery should feed eight to ten as a luncheon dish. Heap it on a platter lined with lettuce, with a few celery leaves over the top.
The Home Cook Book was compiled in Chicago in the 1870s from recipes contributed by named local women and sold for charity, which is why several chicken salads sit side by side, each credited to a different household. Chicken salad in this period is a celery dish as much as a poultry one: celery was a fashionable, expensive winter vegetable in the American Midwest, and its crispness and cost were the point. The dressing here, hard yolks rubbed to a paste with mustard and let down with vinegar, oil or butter, is the older technique that mayonnaise gradually displaced in home kitchens as it became commonplace toward the end of the century.