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Chicken Salad
(England.) Mix 1 tablespoonful of capers, 2 ounces of chopped ham, 3 hard-boiled and sliced eggs, some tarragon leaves and chopped chives, or young onion, 1 anchovy, free from bones and pounded, all well together. Cut a cooked chicken into neat strips, and dip each into this, mixed with sufficient aspic jelly, melted, to stiffen when cool. Arrange these strips, thickly covered with this mixture, in a ring; fill the centre with cooked carrots and celery, cut into dice, and as much green peas, covering them with a thick mayonnaise. Set on ice until stiff, and serve very cold. Garnish with parsley.
This is a chaud-froid in salad form: strips of cooked chicken masked in a savoury aspic mixture, ringed around a dressed macédoine of vegetables. The hinge is temperature control of the aspic, which sets fast and unforgivingly.
- Working the aspicMelt the aspic and let it cool to the point where it thickens slightly and coats a spoon before dipping the chicken. Too hot and it runs off; too cool and it seizes into lumps. Keep the bowl over warm water and stop to rewarm as needed.
- Aspic jelly itselfPeriod cooks made this from a clarified veal or chicken stock rich in gelatine. A strong reduced chicken stock bloomed with about 1 tablespoon powdered gelatine per 2 cups will set firmly enough to hold on the outside of the meat.
- QuantitiesThe recipe gives no chicken weight. A bird of 3 to 4 lb, boned and cut into finger-width strips, suits the other quantities well enough, and would serve roughly six as a first course or four as a lunch dish.
- The anchovyThe recipe calls for one whole anchovy, boned and pounded to a paste: seasoning rather than an ingredient you should taste separately. Two fillets from a tin do the same work; anchovy paste from a tube is a fair substitute at about half a teaspoon.
- Chopped hamTwo ounces is roughly a third of a cup finely chopped. Use a cured, cooked ham with some salt to it; mild sandwich ham will disappear into the jelly.
- "Set on ice"This means the icebox or an ice-packed bowl. A refrigerator at 40F is the modern equivalent, and the dish should go from cold storage to the table without a stop, since aspic softens and slumps quickly at room temperature.
- MayonnaiseA period "thick mayonnaise" was made by hand with raw yolks. Commercial mayonnaise is made with pasteurised egg and is the practical choice for a dish that will sit dressed and chilled before serving.
- The vegetablesCut carrots and celery into even 1/4-inch dice and cook them separately so each keeps its texture; peas need only a couple of minutes. Drain and dry them well, or the mayonnaise will thin and weep into the ring of chicken.
With a Saucepan Over the Sea collected dishes from abroad for American readers at the turn of the twentieth century, and this English entry might be read as a domesticated version of the French chaud-froid: cooked meat masked in a sauce or jelly and served cold. The technique belongs to the age of the cold buffet, and it depended on a household with reliable ice. Tarragon, chives, capers and anchovy together recall the sauce ravigote and the tartare traditions; the anchovy in particular was used less as fish than as the era's salt-and-savour note, the same role it plays in Worcestershire sauce. Chicken salad in this ornate form gradually gave way to the plainer bound salad of chicken, celery and mayonnaise that the twentieth century made ubiquitous.