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Salad, Caroline
Cut three slices from a sandwich loaf, remove the crusts, then cut in quarter-inch-square pieces and fry in a pan with a tablespoon melted butter to a nice golden colour. Drain and place in a salad bowl. Peel and remove the spongy parts of a sound cucumber and cut in small square pieces. Cut also four Spanish sweet peppers into same shape. Then cut an ounce of rich Swiss cheese into similar pieces and add all to the bowl with a half pint of freshly cooked green peas. Shell thirty hazel nuts, cut in halves and add to the rest. Mix a little and season with four tablespoons dressing. Mix well and serve.
A composed chopped salad built on croutons, which means the whole thing hinges on timing rather than technique. Everything can be prepared ahead; the dressing goes on at the table.
- Dress at the last momentFried bread cut this small softens within a few minutes of meeting an acid dressing. Combine the vegetables, cheese and nuts in advance, add the croutons and the four tablespoons of dressing only as you carry the bowl to the table.
- "A sandwich loaf"A close-crumbed white pan loaf, sliced about a quarter inch thick so the trimmed slices dice into the quarter-inch cubes the recipe asks for. Three slices gives roughly a cup and a half of croutons; a firm supermarket white sandwich bread is the direct equivalent.
- Frying the breadOne tablespoon of butter for three slices is a thin allowance and the cubes may catch before they colour evenly. Two to three tablespoons over medium heat is safer, keeping the cubes moving until golden on all sides.
- Spanish sweet peppersAt this period these would most likely have been pimientos, commonly sold roasted and peeled in tins or jars rather than raw bell peppers. Four of them is about a cup diced. Jarred piquillo or pimiento peppers are the closest thing on a modern shelf; raw red bell pepper works but is crunchier and less sweet.
- Half a pint of peasOne cup, cooked and cooled. Frozen peas boiled two or three minutes and drained are better here than anything from a tin, since the salad depends on their sweetness against the cheese.
- Rich Swiss cheeseAn ounce is a modest amount by design, there for aroma rather than bulk. Gruyere or a well-aged Emmental gives the nuttiness intended; the pale, rubbery pre-sliced sort does not.
- Thirty hazelnutsAbout a third of a cup shelled. Toasting them briefly and rubbing off the skins improves both flavour and colour, though the original does not ask for it.
- The dressingUnspecified in the text. A plain vinaigrette of three parts oil to one part vinegar, salted, suits the ingredients; four tablespoons is a light coating, not a soaking.
- YieldEnough for four as a first course or side salad. It does not keep, so make only what will be eaten.
Salads named after women were a fixture of hotel and restaurant cookery around 1900, when a chef's repertoire was expected to include dozens of composed salads distinguished mainly by their garnish and their name. Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, was among the compilers who filled their books with hundreds of such short entries, written for a kitchen where the components of a composed salad were already to hand. The ingredients here point to the period's taste for imported goods in a domestic bowl: Swiss cheese, Spanish pimientos and hazelnuts were all things a well-stocked grocer could supply by tin or jar, and their presence in a simple salad was part of the appeal. Who Caroline was, if anyone, is not recorded; such names were often chosen for a patron, a proprietor's family member, or simply for the sound of them.