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Georgia Salad
Cut in inch julienne shape two cold, boiled potatoes, two cooked, cold beetroots, one small sound onion and two peeled and cored sound apples. Place in a salad bowl, adding three tablespoons cooked, cold string beans, cut in inch pieces. Remove skin and bones from a small smoked herring, then cut in very small square pieces and add to the rest. Pour in four tablespoons dressing. Carefully mix and serve.
A cold composed salad of root vegetables and smoked fish, closer to a Russian vinegret than to anything from the American South. Everything is cooked and chilled in advance, so the only real work is uniform cutting.
- Julienne, meaning matchsticksInch-long julienne here means thin sticks about the thickness of a wooden match, not the wide batons sometimes sold under that name. Uniformity matters more than precision, since the pieces are meant to read as one texture.
- The dressing is not specifiedThe recipe calls only for "four tablespoons dressing" and leaves the type to the cook. A plain oil-and-vinegar dressing, roughly three parts oil to one of wine vinegar, suits this well; a mustard-sharpened vinaigrette holds up better against the beet and herring than a mayonnaise-based one.
- Beetroot will dye everythingBeets bleed into potato and apple within minutes. Dress the beets separately and fold them in at the very end if you want the salad to stay legible rather than uniformly pink.
- Which smoked herringA "small smoked herring" of the period would have been a whole cold-smoked fish, of the bloater or kipper type. Modern equivalents: one kipper fillet, or two or three good marinated herring fillets. Avoid heavily sugared smoked fish, which will unbalance the dressing.
- SaltNo salt is called for because the herring supplies it. Taste after mixing; smoked fish varies enormously in saltiness, and a kipper may need no further seasoning at all.
- Raw onionOne small onion of raw julienne is assertive by current taste. Slicing it thin and soaking it in cold water for ten minutes, or substituting shallot, keeps it from dominating.
- ApplesUse a firm tart apple that will not go mealy — Granny Smith, Braeburn, a russet. Toss the cut apple with a little of the dressing at once to slow browning.
- YieldRoughly four side portions, or two as a light lunch with dark bread. It improves after twenty minutes in the refrigerator but is best eaten the day it is made.
The name is misleading to American ears: with beetroot, potato, apple, onion and smoked herring bound in a sharp dressing, this belongs to the family of composed cold salads eaten across Northern and Eastern Europe, and its closest living relative is the Russian and Baltic vinegret or herring salad. Cookbooks of the period attached national labels to salads loosely and often on the strength of a single ingredient, so the title may point to the Caucasian Georgia rather than to the American state. What is characteristic is the structure: a salad built from cooked vegetables — boiled potatoes, boiled beets and string beans — sharpened by a preserved fish that any grocer stocked in barrels. Salted and smoked herring was among the cheapest protein in Europe for centuries, and this is one of the many dishes that exists because there was always some in the larder.