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Salad, Escarole
Pare off the outer green leaves and cores of two rather small or one large head of fine, white, fresh endive. If free from sand and otherwise thoroughly clean, carefully wipe it with a cloth without washing, but if washing is required, it should be done as rapidly as possible; that is, as soon as it is plunged into the cold water quickly turn it all over with the hands, lift it up, let the water run out, then place it in a wire salad basket and sharply shake it till thoroughly dry.
The long leaves can be cut so as to have them all as near equal in size as possible. Place in salad bowl. Season with four tablespoons dressing, thoroughly mix at the last moment and serve.
A method more than a recipe: the instructions are almost entirely about handling the leaves, and that is where the value lies.
- Endive means escarole hereThe title says escarole, the text says endive, and both refer to the same broad-leaved chicory (Cichorium endivia var. latifolia) rather than the pale forced Belgian endive sold under that name today. Look for a loose, sprawling head with dark outer leaves and a blanched pale heart.
- The hinge is drynessEverything in the recipe serves one end: oil will not cling to wet leaves, and the dressing slides to the bottom of the bowl as a watery pool. Wipe rather than wash when you can, and if you do wash, keep it brief and spin the leaves properly dry.
- Wire salad basketA hinged wire cage swung by hand, which is why the recipe says to shake it sharply. A modern salad spinner does the same work; a clean towel gathered up and shaken will do at a pinch.
- Don't discard everything greenThe outer leaves are trimmed because they are tough and bitter, not because they are inedible. The very coarsest can go into soup or be braised, both common ways of using escarole in Italian cooking.
- The dressing is assumedThe recipe simply says 'dressing' and leaves it undefined; in books of this period that usually meant a plain French dressing, roughly three parts oil to one of vinegar with salt and pepper.
- Dress at the tableDress at the last moment -- Escarole is sturdier than lettuce but still wilts. The instruction to mix 'at the last moment' is meant literally; salted, oiled leaves left standing lose their spring.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; two small heads or one large one will dress about four side salads. Four tablespoons of dressing is restrained by current habits.
The confusion of names in the recipe itself is old and persistent, since endive, escarole, and frisée are cultivated chicories and English never settled on which word went with which leaf. Escarole was familiar in Italian cooking well before it was widely known to English-speaking households, which knew chicory largely as a coffee adulterant. The insistence on not soaking the greens belongs to a broader salad doctrine found in nineteenth-century French and American manuals alike, that a salad is made or ruined before the dressing is ever poured.