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Jellied Chicken Cream Salad
1/2 cup Mazola Mayonnaise 1/2 cup whipped cream 3/4 tablespoon lemon juice 1½ cups cooked chicken, minced 1/3 cup celery, minced 2 tablespoons gelatine 2 tablespoons cold water 1/4 cup stuffed olives, minced very fine Let the gelatine stand five minutes in the cold water. Set the dish in hot water until gelatine melts. Add to the Mayonnaise, fold in the cream and add the remaining ingredients. Transfer to small moulds rubbed with Mazola and chill for several hours. Arrange individually for service. Turn out each mould on a slice of tomato. Top each mould with half a stuffed olive, garnish with lettuce and pass extra Mayonnaise.
A moulded chicken salad from a corn-oil promotional cookbook, built on the maker's own mayonnaise. It works, but the gelatine handling needs attention or the salad will either seize into lumps or set like a rubber puck.
- Temper the gelatineThis is the hinge. Melted gelatine poured into cold mayonnaise sets on contact and leaves hard threads through the salad. Stir a spoonful of the mayonnaise into the warm gelatine first, then return that mixture to the bowl and work quickly.
- The gelatine quantity is highTwo tablespoons is roughly two and a half to three modern envelopes for about three cups of mixture. That gives a firm, sliceable mould in the period style; one envelope (2 1/4 teaspoons) is enough for a set that still eats like a salad.
- Bloom it in more waterTwo tablespoons of water will not fully hydrate two tablespoons of granulated gelatine. Use at least four tablespoons of cold water, or bloom in cold chicken stock for more flavour.
- Mazola MayonnaiseMayonnaise made with Mazola corn oil, most likely the booklet's own mayonnaise recipe rather than a bought product; any good jarred or homemade mayonnaise stands in. Avoid salad dressing of the sweetened type, which fights the lemon and olives.
- Whipped creamUnsweetened and whipped to soft peaks only. Stiff cream folds in as visible lumps and breaks down as the gelatine sets.
- Stuffed olivesPimiento-stuffed green olives. They carry most of the salt in the dish, so taste before adding any.
- Moulds and chillingSmall individual moulds of about 1/2 cup, lightly oiled. Several hours means four at minimum; overnight is better. Unmould by dipping the outside in warm water for a few seconds.
- Yield and holdingAbout six small moulds, enough for six as a luncheon course. It is a mayonnaise-and-chicken salad: keep it refrigerated until service and do not leave it standing on a buffet.
This comes from one of the recipe booklets issued by corn-products manufacturers in the early twentieth century, where every formula names the brand at least once. Moulded salads bound with granulated gelatine were popular from the 1910s onward, as packaged gelatine had become cheap and reliable and the domestic-science movement prized food that could be portioned, turned out and served identically to every guest. The combination here — chicken, celery, olives, mayonnaise lightened with whipped cream — is essentially a chicken salad set firm, and the whipped-cream-and-mayonnaise mixture appears under various names in period cookery as a way to make a rich dressing hold air and shape.