Home › The World's Kitchen › Brussels Sprouts Salad
Brussels Sprouts Salad
Trim the outer leaves off a pint of fresh Brussels sprouts, thoroughly wash and keep in a quart cold water with a tablespoon salt for thirty minutes; drain thoroughly and place in a saucepan with two quarts boiling water and half teaspoon salt. Cover the pan and let boil for forty minutes, drain on a sieve, and let them stand on it in a cool place--not on the ice--until cooled off. Place them in a salad bowl, season with four tablespoons of dressing, mix well and serve.
A plain boiled-and-dressed vegetable salad, of the kind served cool rather than chilled. One instruction badly needs revising.
- Forty minutes is the problemSprouts boiled that long collapse into grey mush and turn strongly sulphurous. Boil trimmed sprouts 6-8 minutes for small ones, up to 10 for large, until a knife tip meets slight resistance. If they are to sit before dressing, shock them in cold water to hold the colour.
- A pint of sproutsVegetables were sold by dry measure; a pint of Brussels sprouts is roughly 8 to 10 ounces, or about 2 cups. That serves two or three as a side salad.
- The salt soakThirty minutes in salted water was standard practice to draw out insects hiding between the leaves. With modern trimmed sprouts it is optional; a rinse and a check of the outer leaves is enough. Cutting a shallow cross in the base is unnecessary at these shorter cooking times.
- "Not on the ice"The instruction reflects a period wariness of the ice-box, which was thought to dull flavour and make vegetables watery, and for a dressed salad served the same hour that is fair. Room temperature or barely cool gives the best taste; if you must refrigerate, dress just before serving.
- Four tablespoons of dressingThe recipe names no dressing; a French dressing of roughly three parts oil to one part vinegar with salt and pepper is the likely intention. Four tablespoons is about right for a pint of sprouts, and lemon juice suits them better than harsh vinegar.
- Halve themThe original leaves the sprouts whole, which makes them awkward to eat and hard to season. Halving or quartering after cooking lets the dressing reach the interior leaves.
Brussels sprouts take their name from the region around Brussels, where the plant is generally traced to market gardens of the Low Countries; they appear in Belgian and French horticultural writing before they reached English and American kitchens in quantity. In the United States they were still something of a novelty vegetable at the turn of the twentieth century, sold in dry measure by the pint or quart. The very long boiling time reflects a general period habit of cooking green vegetables until entirely soft, a habit that modern practice has abandoned for both texture and flavour.