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Salad Francillon
(Paris.) Pare and slice 1 pound of small potatoes. Cook them slowly in 1 pint of consomme for 20 minutes, until tender but not broken. Then drain them and set aside. Parboil 3 dozen small oysters. Wash, peel, and slice thinly 1/2 pound of truffles. Cover them with 2 gills of sherry, add a slice of onion, and cook for 5 minutes. Drain and cool all these, arrange them on a dish and pour over a French dressing, to which is added 1/2 glass of champagne or Chateau Yquem; pour this carefully and serve ice cold.
A composed salad of warm-dressed potatoes, shellfish and truffle, meant to be assembled with care and eaten cold. The measurements are Edwardian and two of them need translating before you shop.
- Gills and glassesA gill is half a cup, so 2 gills of sherry is 1 cup. The "1/2 glass" of champagne or Chateau Yquem at the end is genuinely vague; a wine glass of the period ran roughly 2 to 4 fl oz, so read it as 1 to 2 fl oz (2 to 4 tablespoons) and taste as you go.
- Dress the potatoes warmThis recipe tells you to cool everything before dressing it, but the classic handling is to drain the potatoes from the consomme and dress them while still warm so they drink up the vinaigrette and wine; cold potatoes shed dressing more readily.
- Parboil means seconds, not minutesOysters need only to be brought up in their own liquor until the edges ruffle, well under two minutes. Anything longer and they tighten into rubber, which is fatal in a salad served cold.
- Half a pound of trufflesThis is a restaurant quantity from an era when black truffles were merely expensive rather than extraordinary. An ounce or two, shaved rather than sliced, gives the same effect; skip truffle oil, which reads as chemical against sherry and Sauternes.
- ConsomméA light, clear, well-seasoned stock. Canned consommé works, but dilute it if it is salty, since the potatoes will concentrate whatever is in the pot as they absorb it.
- French dressingIn 1902 this means a plain vinaigrette of oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, not the sweet orange bottled dressing that later took the name. Three parts oil to one part vinegar, with the wine added at the end.
- Cook the potatoes gentlyTwenty minutes at a bare simmer is right for small waxy potatoes sliced thin. A rolling boil breaks the slices and clouds the consommé, and the recipe depends on the slices holding their shape.
- YieldServes four to six as a first course. Assemble it not more than an hour ahead and keep it cold; the truffle perfume fades quickly once it meets the dressing.
The salad is traditionally traced to Francillon, the 1887 play by Alexandre Dumas fils, in which a character dictates the recipe for a "salade japonaise" on stage at the Comédie-Française: potatoes cooked in bouillon, mussels, truffles, and a dressing finished with Château d'Yquem. The play's name stuck to the dish, and Escoffier later fixed it in the professional repertoire as salade Francillon. The version here swaps oysters for the mussels of the stage recipe.