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Vegetable Salad
Anonymous.
Take cold vegetables left from dinner, such as potatoes, peas, string beans, shell beans, beets, etc., and chill them on the ice; cover with mayonaise, and serve. You may use for this any salad dressing.
A leftovers dish rather than a formula, and the instructions assume an icebox and a bowl of homemade mayonnaise on hand. A few points make the difference between a salad and a bowl of damp vegetables.
- Dry the vegetables firstThis is the hinge. Boiled potatoes, beans and beets carry surface water that thins mayonnaise into a grey slick. Drain well and blot on a towel before dressing, and dress no more than an hour ahead.
- "Chill them on the ice"The icebox, not a bath of ice cubes. Refrigerate; cold vegetables hold their shape and absorb less dressing than warm ones.
- Beets go in lastBeets bleed the moment they meet dressing and will stain everything pink. Dress them separately and fold in at the end, or arrange them around the edge.
- Cut to a common sizeThe original names potatoes, peas, string beans, shell beans and beets without proportions. Dice the potatoes and beets to roughly the size of the peas; the salad reads as one dish rather than scraps.
- Season before the mayonnaiseCooked vegetables held overnight taste flat. A spoonful of vinegar or lemon juice and a good pinch of salt tossed through while they are still cool, then the mayonnaise, gives it edge.
- Mayonnaise and raw eggPeriod mayonnaise was made to order with raw yolk. If you make your own, use pasteurized eggs, keep the salad refrigerated and eat it the same day; commercial mayonnaise, made with acidified pasteurized egg, is the safer choice for a dish that sits on a table.
- Age of the leftoversVegetables from last night's dinner are the intent. Cooked vegetables kept refrigerated are good for three to four days; anything with a sour or fermented smell goes out rather than under dressing.
- YieldThe original gives no quantities. As a working suggestion, about 4 cups of prepared vegetables with roughly 1/2 cup dressing will serve four as a side.
This is the frugal end of the nineteenth-century salad course: a household version of the composed vegetable salads French cookery called macédoine or salade russe, in which diced cooked vegetables are bound with mayonnaise and turned out as a dish in their own right. Restaurant versions were built from vegetables cooked expressly for the purpose; the domestic version, as here, simply annexed whatever came off the dinner table the night before, which is why the recipe gives no quantities at all. The Home Cook Book is one of the early compiled charity cookbooks, assembled from contributions by many hands, and the anonymous single-sentence entry is characteristic of the form: a note passed between cooks who could be trusted to know what mayonnaise was and how much of it a bowl of cold beans wanted. The airy permission at the end, "You may use for this any salad dressing," also reflects a period when boiled dressings thickened with egg and flour were found on home tables alongside true mayonnaise.