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Meat Salad Combinations
1-Combine one and one-half cups cooked veal or chicken, one cup diced cucumber, one minced green pepper with plain French dressing. Add one teaspoon Worcestershire and serve on lettuce with Savory Mayonnaise. 2-Combine two cups diced, cooked tongue, one cup diced celery and one-fourth cup sliced sweet pickles with French dressing to moisten. Serve on lettuce with Mazola Mayonnaise, adding two tablespoons crushed Roquefort cheese to three-fourths cupful. 3-Combine one and one-half cups diced, cooked chicken, one-half cup salted nut meats, chopped, one cup diced apple, one-half cup diced celery with Cream Mayonnaise. Serve on lettuce with a garnish of pimiento.
Three variations on the same formula: diced cooked meat, a crisp vegetable, a dressing to moisten, and a richer mayonnaise on top. The proportions are sound; the vocabulary needs translating.
- Two dressings, not oneTwo dressings in the first two -- Combinations 1 and 2 use French dressing (oil and vinegar) to moisten and coat the meat, then a mayonnaise as a topping. Skipping the first step leaves the meat bland under a rich sauce, which is the point of the double dressing. No. 3 is dressed with Cream Mayonnaise only.
- The named mayonnaisesSavory Mayonnaise, Cream Mayonnaise and Mazola Mayonnaise are capitalised as cross-references, so they are almost certainly recipes given elsewhere in this book rather than jarred products, though Mazola Mayonnaise would have been made with the brand's corn oil. Their exact formulas are not given here. Any good mayonnaise, thinned with a spoonful of cream where the recipe says Cream Mayonnaise, will do.
- The Roquefort ratio"Adding two tablespoons crushed Roquefort cheese to three-fourths cupful" means per three-quarters cup of mayonnaise. Crumble and mash it in with a fork so it streaks rather than lumps.
- Cooked tongueBeef tongue is no longer a supermarket staple; ask a butcher, or substitute thick-cut ham or corned beef, both of which suit the celery and sweet pickle.
- Veal and chickenThe recipe calls simply for cooked meat, which in a household of the period would often have meant leftovers. Poached or roasted chicken breast, cooled and diced to about half an inch, is the practical modern route. "Salted nut meats" in No. 3 means salted shelled nuts, almonds or walnuts most likely.
- Keep it coldDiced cooked meat in dressing is a classic warm-holding risk. Mix, chill, and serve within a couple of hours; do not leave the bowl out on the buffet through a long lunch.
- Apple and cucumberDice the apple last and toss it straight into the dressing so it does not brown. If the cucumber is large and seedy, seed it and salt the dice briefly, then pat dry, or the salad waters out.
- YieldNo yield is given. On the quantities listed, each combination should stretch to roughly three or four luncheon portions on lettuce, or about six as a first course.
Mazola, a corn oil brand generally traced to the Corn Products Refining Company in the early twentieth century, appears here as a branded ingredient inside its own recipe, a standard device of manufacturer cookbooks of the era. The three salads belong squarely to the American ladies' luncheon of the 1910s to 1930s, when a cold composed salad on a lettuce leaf, garnished with pimiento, is often said to have been a typical midday course. The chicken, apple, celery and nut version is essentially a Waldorf salad with meat added; the reliance on cooked tongue and leftover veal reflects a period when a household bought and cooked whole cuts and expected to make a second meal from them.