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Chiffonade Salad
Cut open two large green peppers, remove the seeds and veins and cut into shreds, drop them in boiling water, boil for one minute, drain and cool; cut a grape fruit into halves, take out the pulp with a spoon and cut into bits; peel three good sized, firm tomatoes and cut into small pieces; shredd finely one head of crisp lettuce; marinate each article separately with a French dressing. In the center of the salad dish put the grape fruit pulp, arrange round it the prepared peppers, tomatoes and lettuce in such a way as to display the different colors to the best advantage. Serve at once.
A composed salad that depends entirely on the components staying separate and dry-edged until the moment it reaches the table. Everything can be prepped ahead; the assembly is the last thing you do.
- French dressing of the periodFrench dressing at this date generally meant a plain vinaigrette of oil and vinegar with salt and pepper, commonly around three parts oil to one; the recipe itself gives no proportions. No mustard, sugar or emulsifier — anything creamy or sweet will muddy the four flavors this salad is built on.
- Marinate separately, and brieflyThis is the hinge. Each of the four elements is dressed on its own so the colors and juices do not bleed together. Five to ten minutes is enough; lettuce dressed much longer than that collapses.
- The one-minute pepper boilGreen bell peppers are blanched only to take the raw edge off and set the color. Shock them in ice water immediately and pat dry, or the residual heat carries them to limp.
- Grapefruit pulpScooping with a spoon gives ragged, juicy bits. For cleaner segments, supreme the fruit with a knife and cut each section into thirds. Drain the pieces well — free grapefruit juice will dilute the dressing on the plate.
- Peeling tomatoesScore the skins, drop into boiling water for 15 to 20 seconds, then into cold water; the skins slip. Seed the tomatoes as well if they are watery, which most supermarket tomatoes are.
- "Head of crisp lettuce"A crisphead or a firm romaine rather than a soft butterhead. Shred it crosswise into thin ribbons and dry it thoroughly in a towel or spinner before dressing.
- Yield and timingThe recipe gives no yield; the quantities suggest about four servings as a first course. "Serve at once" is literal — build it on the dish it goes to the table on, since the arrangement will not survive being moved.
Chiffonade is French for something made of rags, and in cookery it names the technique rather than the dish: leaves or vegetables cut into fine ribbons. By the turn of the twentieth century American cookbooks had borrowed the word for a whole family of salads built from several shredded ingredients arranged for contrast, and the appeal here is frankly visual — pale yellow grapefruit at the center, green peppers, red tomato, green lettuce, each kept apart so no color runs. The grapefruit is the tell of the period. It was still something of a novelty in Northern kitchens, arriving by rail from Florida groves whose commercial plantings expanded sharply in the 1880s and 1890s, and cooks put it into salads and served it in halves at breakfast. Dressing each element separately, rather than tossing everything in a bowl, belongs to the same impulse toward the composed, carefully plated salad that ran through hotel and household cooking of the era.