Home › Sallets and Salads › Sallets and Salads: Serenely
Sallets and Salads: Serenely
Serenely full, the epicure would say, 'Fate cannot harm me, I have dined to-day."
This is the original and more familiar "A Recipe for Salad," as given by the author's daughter, Lady Holland, in her "Memoir"-a recipe that was subsequently placed by the gifted divine in somewhat altered form, slightly abridged, and the quantity of the ingredients in one or two instances slightly changed. In the variant it will be seen that the portions of potato and anchovy were increased and the relative quantities of oil and vinegar were amended.¹ It is a question whether this celebrated recipe, so enthusiastically expressed and so tempting to the uninitiated who would naturally be led astray by the climax of the ode, has done more harm or more good 1 "Two large potatoes, passed through kitchen sieve, Unwonted softness to the salad give.
Of mordant mustard add a single spoon, Distrust the condiment that bites so soon; But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault To add a double quantity of salt.
Three times the spoon with oil from Lucca crown, And once with vinegar procured from town.
True flavour needs it, and your poet begs The pounded yellow of two well-boiled eggs; Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl, And, scarce suspected, animate the whole.
And, lastly, on the flavoured compound toss A magic teaspoon of anchovy sauce.
Then though green turtle fail, though venison's tough, And ham and turkey are not boiled enough, Serenely full, the epicure may say, 'Fate cannot harm me, I have dined to-day." in the important interests of salad-making-whether the evil inculcated in the prescription as a whole has not overbalanced the good results of extolling the virtues of salad itself. The niceties of salad-making are so subtle-so little may make or mar-it were unwise to prescribe either eggs or potato to the inexperienced. The anchovy sauce must, perforce, be banished as fatal; while mashed potatoes should always be used with discretion. In corn-salad a little potato assuredly adds to the unctuousness; and where lettuce is inclined to be tough or stringy, it may be advantageously employed. It is likewise eminently useful where the vinegar may have been dealt out too liberally. But with tender, brittle, well-blanched cos or endive, who would think of utilising either egg or potato! And how may mustard be appropriately blended with chicory, water-cresses, or radishes, so rich themselves in pungency? In the employment of condiments one should ever well consider the special greenmeat to be treated, or what Montaigne has termed "the differences of Sallets according to their seasons." Cayenne, tabasco, and garlic are yet more dangerous in unpractised hands, and may readily, like the brass of an orchestra run riot, drown with their dissonance the arpeggio passages and more dulcet notes of the other instruments.
The recipe proper is the verse in the footnote — Sydney Smith's salad dressing — with the surrounding prose acting as a running critique of it. Treated as instructions, it is a thick, emulsified dressing for a bowl of greens, and the commentary around it is worth heeding.
- The spoon is undefined"a single spoon" of mustard and "three times the spoon with oil" give a ratio, not a volume. If read as a tablespoon, that is 3 tablespoons oil to 1 of vinegar and 1 of made mustard (the verse itself counsels distrust of mustard that "bites so soon," so err on the low side). The proportions matter more than the absolute amounts, since two sieved potatoes and two egg yolks will bulk it out considerably.
- Oil from LuccaLucca in Tuscany was the standard source of fine table olive oil in nineteenth-century Britain, and "Lucca oil" was simply the grocer's term for good olive oil. Any decent fruity extra-virgin will do; the point was that the oil be edible on its own rather than the rank stuff sold for lamps.
- Anchovy sauceThis was a thin bottled condiment — anchovy, vinegar, spice — not the thick paste sold in tubes today. If substituting anchovy paste or colatura, use less than a teaspoon. The author's own verdict is that the sauce "must, perforce, be banished as fatal"; he does not say why, though the bottled versions of the period were strongly flavoured.
- Halve the salt"A double quantity of salt" doubles an unstated base amount, and doubling anything to modern taste is risky. Salt to taste after the emulsion is made, not before.
- The potato is a thickener, not a fillerTwo boiled potatoes pushed through a sieve while still warm turn the dressing into something closer to a thick sauce. The commentary above is right that this suits limp or stringy leaves, corn salad, or an over-vinegared bowl, and ruins crisp cos or endive. Decide by the leaf in front of you.
- Order of assemblyWork the mustard, salt and sieved yolks to a paste, add the oil in a thin stream to emulsify, then the vinegar, then fold in the sieved potato and the grated onion. Adding the vinegar early will keep it from coming together.
- Onion atoms"Scarce suspected" is the instruction. Grate a little onion on the finest side of a box grater and use the juice and pulp — chopped onion sits in the bowl as chunks and dominates.
- YieldAs written this makes a great deal of dressing, since two sieved potatoes and two yolks bulk it out far beyond the few spoons of oil and vinegar. Scale it down sharply for a small table.
The verse is Sydney Smith's, the Anglican clergyman and Edinburgh Review co-founder (1771–1845), whose reputation as the funniest talker of his generation long outran his sermons. It appears in the Memoir compiled by his daughter, Saba, Lady Holland, published a decade after his death, and was reprinted widely in cookery books and comic anthologies through the later nineteenth century; the closing couplet — "Fate cannot harm me, I have dined to-day" — became a stock quotation. That two versions circulated, with the potato and anchovy increased in one, is the fate of a recipe transmitted as light verse rather than as kitchen instruction. What the poem records is a salad in which the leaves carry a rich, egg-and-potato-thickened sauce rather than a vinaigrette, served as relief from the boiled turkey and tough venison the last stanza cheerfully concedes. The author of this book uses Smith's ode as a foil — hence the appeal to Montaigne on "the differences of Sallets according to their seasons" and the warning against cayenne and garlic in unpractised hands.