The culinary schism: Oil, cream, and the contested history of potato salad

“ Serve in a rather deep dish with croutons of fried bread or dry toast round the edge. A tin of prawns can be used instead of chicken in which case a small teaspoonful of anchovy sauce may be added at the last, instead of salt, as the prawns may be already a little salt.
Potatoes are to my mind one of the most ill-used vegetables we have. They require simple care to make them a useful and welcome addition to at least two meals in the day. Too often I have found the greatest carelessness in the cooking of a simple potato. ”

“ Heat one tablespoon of drippings in a stew-pan, in which you have cut up part of an onion and some parsley; cover this and stew about ten minutes. In the meantime, drain the beans, put into the stew-pan and stew until tender; add one tablespoon of flour and season with salt and pepper (meat gravy or soup stock will improve them) . You may pare about half a dozen potatoes, cut into dice shape, and add to the beans. If you prefer, you may add cream or milk instead of soup stock and use butter.
POTATOES Potatoes are valuable articles of food and care should be taken in cooking them. ”

“ New potatoes, oil, white vinegar, onions, parsley, tarragon, chervil, celery, cream, salt, pepper, tarragon vinegar, watercress, cucumber, truffles.
Steam as many new potatoes as you require until they are well cooked, let them get cold, cut them into slices and pour three teaspoonsful of salad oil and one of white vinegar over them. Then rub a salad bowl with onion, put in a layer of the potato slices, and sprinkle with chopped parsley, tarragon, chervil, and celery, then another layer of potatoes until you have used all the potatoes ”

“ To persons who have never eaten any, it may appear a strange dish, but let them try it.
Of Potatoes.—A potato-salad is the one that requires the most seasonings, especially oil and vinegar. They are better served warm than cold, although many prefer them in the latter state. When steamed, peeled, and sliced, put them in the salad-dish, with salt, pepper, vinegar, oil, and parsley, to taste. Mix the whole gently and well, and serve. If served very warm, butter may be used instead of oil.
Another.—Add to the above a few anchovies, or slices of pickled cucumbers, or capers, or pickled beets. ”

“ Young housekeepers will be surprised at the many vegetables, frequently left-overs, from which appetizing salads may be made by the addition of a couple tablespoonfuls of mayonnaise, besides nut meats, lettuce, watercress, celery and fruit, all of which may be used to advantage. A good potato salad is one of the cheapest and most easily prepared salads. A German dressing for dandelions, lettuce or potatoes may be prepared in a few minutes by adding a couple of tablespoonfuls of salad dressing (which the forehanded housewife will always keep on hand) to a little hot ham or bacon gravy. ”

“ POTATO SALAD.—I do not know much about salads different from the every day style, with the exception of an old fashioned German potato salad. Boil your potatoes with the jackets, peel and slice while hot; heat bacon drippings in which glaze onions which must be cut very fine, then add flour, brown, add diluted vinegar, let it come to a boil, cool, add a little sweet cream, turn it over your potatoes, which were previously seasoned with pepper and salt. Garnish with either sliced or chopped hard boiled eggs and green parsley. ”

“ Cut the potatoes and eggs into bits of even size, as large as the tip of your finger; stone the olives and cut them up, too; mix them together in a bowl, but do not stir them much, or you will break the potatoes; sprinkle well with French dressing, and put on the ice; when it is lunch or supper time, mix quickly, only once, with stiff mayonnaise, and put on lettuce; this is a delicious salad to have with cold meats. ”

“ Carême had grasped the essential truth that the richer the cooking is, the more speedily do the stomach and palate tire of it. And, indeed, it is a great mistake to suppose that, in order to do good cooking, it is necessary to be prodigal in one’s use of all things. In reality, practice dictates fixed and regular quantities, and from these one cannot diverge without upsetting the hygienic and sapid equilibrium on which the value of a sauce depends. ”

“ Take some raw onion cut in slices; if you do not like the strong taste, use shallot; and lay four or five flat slices on the bottom of the salad dish. Put the tomato slices over them, sprinkle with salt and just a dust of castor sugar. In four hours lift the tomatoes and remove the onions altogether. Make in a cup the following sauce: Dissolve a salt-spoonful of salt in a teaspoonful of tarragon vinegar. Stir in a dessert-spoonful of oil, dropping it slowly in, add a very little mustard, some pepper and a sprinkle of chopped chervil. Some people like chopped chives. ”

“ To one tablespoonful of lemon or vinegar add three tablespoonsful of the best olive oil, a dash of black pepper, and a half teaspoonful of salt. Beat well with a silver fork, and add enough paprika to give it a ruddy color, and a rich flavor. If the salad dish is rubbed with garlic it will do no great harm to the mixture! ”

“ As a cosmetic, nothing equals olive oil. The beauty of Spanish and Italian women is owing largely to their daily and liberal use of it in salads and cooked foods. It improves the complexion and rounds out the lines of the form.
Eating salad is by far the most agreeable way to take olive oil. There are persons with whom all acids disagree; these unfortunates have to do without the fragrant vinegar; but they can easily learn to like salads with oil and salt alone. The taste is decidedly worth acquiring.
In making the dressing, oil should by all means be applied "by a spendthrift." ”

“ Potato salad is always procurable, and in summer at lunch, instead of the hot vegetable, or in winter when green salad is dear, is very valuable. It may be varied by the addition, one day, of a few chopped pickles, another, a little onion, or celery, or parsley, or tarragon, a little ravigotte butter beaten to cream with the vinegar, or with meat, as follows: Boil the potatoes in their skins, peel them, cut them into pieces twice the thickness of a fifty-cent piece, and put them into a salad bowl with cold meat (bouilli from soup is excellent) ”

“ An excellent salad dressing is also made by using the yolk of hard-boiled eggs, some cold mashed potatoes well pressed together with a fork, oil, vinegar, mustard, and salt rubbed in, in the proportions of two of oil to one of vinegar.
A salad must be fresh and freshly made, to be good. Never serve a salad the second day; and it is not well to cover a delicate salad with too much mayonnaise. The 130 very heart of the celery or the delicate inner leaves of the lettuce are the best for dinners. The heavy chicken and lobster, cabbage and potato salads, are dishes for lunches and suppers. ”

“ Not a whit less important in the history of his civilisation is his emancipation from that vile, vinegar-drenched abomination to the succulent tomato, the unrivalled potato, well "fatigued" in the "capacious salad-bowl."
Of every woman worthy of the name, it is the duty to master the secret of the perfect salad, and to prepare it for her own—and man's—greater comfort and joy in this life, and—who knows?—salvation in the next. This secret is all in the dressing. It is easy enough to buy in the market, or order at the greengrocer's a lettuce, or a cucumber, or a pound of tomatoes. ”

“ Fat pork is lower in price than bacon, and can be assimilated by vigorous people, especially those living out of doors.
Cream is one of the most delicious fatty food materials, and is digestible, but ranks with butter and bacon as to cost. While it is not a cheap food, it is not such an extravagance when moderately used as some people suppose, who have not worked out the problem. Usually the most economical source of cream is to take it from the top of the bottle of milk. The remaining partially skimmed milk may be used at table or in cooking or for making cottage cheese. ”

“ Heat the cream in a farina-kettle almost to boiling; then stir in the flour, previously wet with cold milk. Boil for two minutes, stirring all the time; add the sugar, and take from the fire. When half cold beat in the whipped whites of egg with swift strokes, but not many. Set aside to cool. When quite cold, whip in the oil, [152] pepper, mustard and salt, and if your salad is ready, add the vinegar, and pour at once over it.
This dressing is especially nice for lettuce salad. If made for chickens, only the white meat should be used. ”

“ Mix all lightly together and mix with mayonnaise salad dressing. As all people do not like olive oil I usually make a boiled dressing as follows: Heat half a cupful of vinegar with as much hot water and two large spoonfuls of butter. Beat the yolks of four eggs very light with a scant half a cupful of sugar; add one level teaspoonful of flour and stir well; add then one tablespoonful of dry mustard, one teaspoonful of salt and one of celery salt or celery seed; a dash of black and of red pepper, beat a little; place over the fire and cook thick, beating well. ”

“ Put in a saucepan 1 generous tablespoon of butter and 1 cup of milk; when hot add some cold potatoes cut in dice, season with pepper, salt, and a few drops of onion juice. Let them get thoroughly hot, then add the beaten yolks of 2 eggs, stir constantly until thick. Great care must be taken not to let it cook too long or the sauce will curdle. ”

“ For sauce put some thick cream in a porcelain sauce-pan and thicken it with corn-flour which has been mixed with cold water. When it begins to boil stir in the beaten yolks of two eggs. As it cools beat it well to prevent it from being lumpy, and when nearly cold stir in the juice of two lemons, a little tarragon vinegar, a pinch of salt, and a soupçon of cayenne pepper. Peel and slice some very ripe tomatoes or cold potatoes, steep them in vinegar with cayenne, pounded ginger, and plenty of salt. ”

“ Most people think mayonnaise is very difficult to make, but, really, it is as easy as baking potatoes, after you have once learned how. Every salad given before is just as nice with mayonnaise as with French dressing, and you can try each one both ways; then there are these, which are better with mayonnaise.
Chicken Salad
1 cup of chicken cut in large bits. 1/2 cup of celery, cut up and then dried. 2 hard-boiled eggs, cut into good-sized pieces. 6 olives, stoned and cut up. 1/2 cup mayonnaise.
Mix all very lightly together, as stirring will make the salad mussy; put on lettuce. ”

“ Insipid, as life without love, is the dinner without imagination.
Vegetables have no special place in the scheme of August's dinner. But a salad will not come amiss. Remember, the feast is ordered in sheer voluptuousness of spirit. The fifth course calls for the scarlet splendour of tomatoes; and the presiding dahlias, in bowl of Delft, clamour for the gold of mayonnaise sauce to carry out the exulting trumpeting harmony. A hint, here, to the earnest, ambitious gourmand; if cream be worked, deftly and slowly, into the thickening sauce, sublime will be the results. ”

“ As an atonement for that offence against civilisation, the midday dinner, the Germans have invented a late supper that defies the critic: the very meanest Speise-Saal is transfigured when the gaslight falls softly on the delicious potato or cucumber or herring salads of the country, flanked by the tall slim glasses of amber Rhenish wine. But, excelling Germany, even as Germany excels France, Hungary is the true home of the salad. ”

“ A good dressing for lobster is essence of anchovy, mushroom ketchup, hard-boiled eggs, and a little cream.
Mashed potatoes, rubbed down with cream, or simply mixed with vinegar, are no bad substitute for eggs, and impart to the salad a new and not unpleasing flavour. French beans, the most delicate of vegetables, give the salad eater a new sensation. A dressing can be mixed in the following proportions: "Four mustard ladles of mustard, four salt ladles of salt. Three spoonfuls of best Italian oil, twelve of vinegar, three unboiled eggs. All are to be carefully rubbed together." ”

“ Have prepared slips of bacon, giblets, onion, water, pepper, salt, and a little clove or mace, if you like. Put in the ducks and let them stew gently but constantly for two hours. Then add the juice of green grapes or of a lemon, or else a little lemon pickle. Flour the ducks each time you turn them, and thicken with butter rolled in flour.—Mrs. Col. W.
SALADS.
In making salads, be careful to add the vinegar last. Where oil cannot be obtained, fresh butter, drawn or melted, is an excellent substitute and is indeed preferred to oil by some persons, epicureans to the contrary notwithstanding. ”

“ When once he gets a footing in your garden you will never dislodge him; nor will you want to. Very well, then:
Having grated your horse, add a quarter of a pint of cream—English or Devonshire—a dessert-spoonful of sifted sugar, half that quantity of salt, and a tablespoonful of vinegar. Mix all together, and, if for hot meat, heat in the oven, taking care that the mixture does not curdle. Many people use oil instead of cream, and mix grated orange rind with the sauce. The Germans do not use oil, but either make the relish with cream, or hard-boiled yolk of egg. ”

“ Fat is available in various forms, with differing flavors and a wide range of prices. To many people it is unpalatable in some of its cheapest forms; yet its use is important, and some kind should be included in the diet. Fluid and emulsified fats are the most easily digested, hence olive oil, cream, and egg yolk are highly desirable. Bacon and butter belong nearly in the same class. A vigorous man at hard labor can digest fat of any kind without difficulty, and needs it because it gives so much fuel in proportion to its bulk. ”

“ It is furnished chiefly by meats, fish, cheese, milk, eggs, cereals, and legumes. (2) Fats, which furnish heat and energy, but are chiefly valuable for storing a reserve supply of fat in the body. They are furnished largely by butter, cream, olive and similar vegetable oils, bacon and other fat meats. (3) Carbohydrates, which furnish heat and energy. They [Pg 2] are supplied chiefly by potatoes and other vegetables, cereals, fruits, and sugars.
People who are eating the proper amount and kind of food should approximate the normal weight [3] for their sex, age, and height. ”