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Lettuce Salad
Procure two fine, sound, medium heads fresh, crisp lettuce. Trim off the outer green leaves and stems. Cut the leaves in two. Plunge it into plenty of cold water, turn it over with the hands several times without pressing it, so that it will be entirely free of sand.
Drain it thoroughly in a wire salad basket or cloth, then place it in a salad bowl with the hearts on top, and just before serving season with four tablespoons dressing, Gently mix all over and serve.
A plain green salad written for a period when washing and drying the leaves was the whole of the technique. Two details carry the dish: the leaves must be bone dry, and the dressing goes on at the table.
- The dressing is unspecified"four tablespoons dressing" most likely points to a French dressing of oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, the usual assumption in books of this period; no ratio is given on the page. Any vinaigrette will do, and four tablespoons is a modest amount for two heads.
- Dress at the last momentThe instruction "just before serving" is the hinge. Acid and salt draw water out of lettuce within minutes, and a bowl dressed early collapses into limp leaves in a puddle.
- Dry the leaves completelyWater clinging to the leaves dilutes the dressing and stops it clinging. A salad spinner replaces the wire basket; a clean towel works as well if you are patient with it.
- Wire salad basketA hinged wire cage swung by hand, usually out of doors or over a sink, to fling water off the leaves by centrifugal force. The modern spinner does the same job indoors.
- What kind of lettuce"Two fine, sound, medium heads" most likely means a butterhead or other soft head; Boston or Bibb are the closest match. The recipe names no variety.
- Hearts on topThe pale inner leaves are arranged last so they show. It is a presentation choice, not a structural one, but it also keeps the tenderest leaves out from under the weight of the rest.
- Mixing"Gently mix all over" means lifting and turning with two utensils, not stirring. Butterhead bruises easily and shows every crushed spot.
- YieldTwo medium heads would serve about four as a side salad, though the recipe gives no yield.
Instructions this basic earned space in cookbooks for practical reasons. Lettuce was seasonal and often sandy, arriving from local market gardens rather than washed and bagged, which is why several of these lines concern grit removal. The dressing ratio the book assumes — oil, vinegar, salt, pepper — is the French dressing that dominated American salad chapters of the period, before bottled and creamy dressings took over mid-century. The rule of dressing at the very last moment is much older than the book and is often said to come from French service, where the salad was tossed at the table and eaten immediately.