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Cold Meat Salad
Free the meat from skin and bone and cut it into small dice. For each pint make a French dressing with four tablespoonfuls of olive oil, one tablespoonful of plain or tarragon vinegar, one-half of a teaspoonful of salt, and one quarter of a teaspoonful of white pepper, and with it thoroughly marinate the meat. Set aside in a cold place for an hour or more, that it may be thoroughly impregnated with the dressing. If you have any cold vegetables, pour boiling water over them to rinse off any previous sauce or dressing, drain and marinate separately with French dressing; arrange a bed of lettuce or other green salad on a platter, pour on it the meat and garnish with the vegetables. A few nasturtium leaves will add piquancy to the salad, or a little water-cress may be used with the lettuce, the combination depending largely upon the meat on hand and the way in which it was cooked. Boiled meat usually needs more in the way of seasoning than roast meat; a few drops of onion juice or a teaspoonful of finely chopped chives is frequently a decided addition.
A leftovers formula rather than a fixed recipe: the proportions are given per pint of diced meat, and everything else follows from what is in the refrigerator.
- A pint of meatMeat is measured by volume here, not weight. A pint of small dice comes to somewhere in the region of a pound of cooked boneless meat, depending on how closely it packs -- enough for three or four as a light main course.
- The dressing ratioFour to one oil to vinegar is sharper-tasting than it sounds once it soaks into cold meat, which absorbs a great deal. Taste after the hour's marinating and correct the salt then, not before.
- Chill, then serve at room temperatureThe hour in a cold place is the point of the dish, but meat straight from the refrigerator tastes of nothing. Let it stand out fifteen minutes before it goes on the lettuce.
- Rinsing the vegetablesBoiling water over cold cooked vegetables was a way of stripping off yesterday's white sauce or mayonnaise. It works, but it also softens them, so drain hard and dress while still warm.
- Onion juiceGrate an onion on the fine side of a box grater and press the pulp through a sieve. A few drops is genuinely a few drops; it is assertive.
- Nasturtium leavesPeppery and edible, from garden nasturtiums only, never from a florist or garden centre where plants are routinely treated. Watercress or rocket does the same job.
- Leftover safetyThe dish assumes meat cooked recently and kept cold throughout. Use cooked meat within three or four days of cooking and keep the marinating bowl in the refrigerator, not on a counter.
- Which meats workRoast beef, lamb, veal, chicken and boiled tongue all take the dressing well. Cured or smoked meats are already salted, so cut the half teaspoon of salt back sharply.
Cold meat cookery was its own department in household books, and a considerable one: a large Sunday roast was expected to reappear through the week, and the cook's skill was measured partly by how little of it was wasted. This entry belongs to a French-influenced strand of that tradition, where the answer to leftovers is a vinaigrette and a bed of greens rather than the hash or rissole of earlier English practice. The instruction to marinate the vegetables separately and the mention of tarragon vinegar both point to the same source; French dressing in this sense simply meant oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, with no sweetener and nothing red about it. The nasturtium leaf garnish reflects a kitchen garden still close at hand, and the closing note that boiled meat needs more seasoning than roast is a thoroughly practical observation.