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Salad, Basto
Cut into julienne strips one very small stalk white celery; one sound, good-sized green pepper, cut the same way. Peel and core one good-sized sound apple and cut it into strips as the others. Neatly trim a small head fresh, crisp escarole (endive), detach the leaves, wash well and thoroughly drain and cut each leaf in half. Place the four articles in a large salad bowl. Season with four tablespoons salad dressing. Carefully mix, at the very last moment, and serve.
MALAGA PUDDING One and a half ounces good butter, two egg yolks, one and a half ounces of cake crumbs or bread crumbs, one ounce of Malaga currants and two tablespoons Malaga or a similar wine. Place the butter and egg yolks in a basin and briskly beat up with a wooden spoon for five minutes, then add the sugar; beat for five minutes more; add the crumbs, wine and currants; mix sharply for one minute. Beat up the whites to a stiff froth and add to the preparation, then gently mix for one minute with the skimmer. Lightly butter six individual pudding moulds, sprinkle a little flour inside of the moulds all around. Fill them with the preparation, Place the moulds in a small, square tin, pour hot water into the tin up to half the height of the moulds. Place in a brisk oven to steam for twenty minutes. Remove, unmould carefully on a hot dish and serve with a Sabayon sauce separately.
A four-ingredient julienne salad that stands or falls on knife work and timing. Nothing here is dated except the vocabulary and the vagueness about the dressing.
- Escarole, not Belgian endiveThe parenthetical "(endive)" reflects older American usage, in which escarole was routinely called endive. Use a head of broad-leaved escarole, not the pale torpedo-shaped Belgian endive sold under that name now.
- Julienne means matchsticksRoughly 1/8 inch square and 2 inches long. The point is that celery, pepper and apple all read as the same shape, so the salad eats as one thing rather than three.
- White celeryBlanched celery, grown covered to keep it pale and mild, was widely sold and prized around 1900; the nearest thing now is celery hearts. Use the inner ribs rather than the dark stringy outer stalks.
- The salad dressingThe recipe says only "salad dressing"; for a raw julienne salad of this kind a plain oil-and-vinegar French dressing, roughly three parts oil to one of vinegar with salt and pepper, is the likely intention rather than a mayonnaise. Four tablespoons is enough for a salad this size; more and the escarole collapses.
- Dress at the last momentThis is the hinge, and the recipe says so explicitly. Escarole wilts within minutes of meeting vinegar, and the apple and celery lose their snap. Toss at the table if you can.
- Keep the apple from browningCut the apple last, or hold the strips in lightly acidulated water and drain them well. A firm tart variety holds its shape better than a soft eating apple.
- Dry the greens properly"Thoroughly drain" is doing real work here. Water clinging to the leaves dilutes the dressing and it slides to the bottom of the bowl.
- YieldAs written this serves two generously or four as a side salad alongside a roast or cold meat.
This comes from Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906), the work of a chef long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and it is typical of his method: a short list of raw ingredients, all cut to one shape, bound by a plain French dressing and given a proper name. Filippini's salads run to dozens of such names — places, patrons, and words borrowed from cards and games — and "Basto" is most likely of that last sort, basto being the club suit in the Spanish deck and the name of one of the trump cards in the old game of quadrille; that connection is suggestive rather than documented. What the recipe does record reliably is the state of American salad vegetables at the turn of the century: celery still blanched white and treated as a delicacy, and escarole called endive.