CHICKEN SALAD


Original Recipe:

The fowls for this purpose should be young and fine. You may either boil or roast them. They must be quite cold. Having removed all the skin and fat, and disjointed the fowls cut the meat from the bones into very small pieces, not exceeding an inch. Wash and split two large fine heads of celery, and cut the white part into pieces also about an inch long, and having mixed the chicken and celery together, put them into a deep china dish, cover it and set it away.

It is best not to prepare the dressing till just before the salad is to be eaten, that it may be as fresh as possible. Have ready the yolks of eight hard-boiled eggs. Put them into a flat dish, and mash them to a paste with the back of a wooden spoon. Add to the egg a small tea-spoonful of fine salt, the same quantity of cayenne pepper, half a jill of made mustard, a jill or a wine-glass and a half of vinegar, and rather more than two wine-glasses of sweet oil. Mix all these ingredients thoroughly; stirring them a long time till they are quite smooth. The dressing should not be put on till a few minutes before the salad is sent in as by lying in it the chicken and celery will become tough and hard. After you pour it on, mix the whole well together with a silver fork.

Chicken salad should be accompanied with plates of bread and butter, and a plate of biscuits. It is a supper dish, and is brought in with terrapin, oysters, &c.

Source:

Leslie, Eliza: Miss Leslie's Directions for Cookery, Henry Carey Baird, Philadelphia, 1851

Modern-Day Adaptations:

As this recipe makes a whacking great amount, we cut everything in half. Modern jumbo sized eggs were used, so we further reduced those from four to two, although since one of them proved to be double-yolked we wound up with three yolks total. Recall that a "jill" (more often found spelled "gill") is four ounces or half a cup. "Sweet oil" is olive oil. And rather than make our own mustard we used Grey Poupon. It is unclear whether celery in the 19th century was precisely the same vegetable as is sold today since the only "white" part of the stalk is about an inch at the very bottom end, so we included quite a bit of the green parts as well, which enhanced the appearance of the dish.

Results:

A modern restaurant that put this dish on the menu would call it "Chicken-Celery Salad with Mustard Vinaigrette" and they would probably sell tons of it. Miss Leslie is quite correct about the importance of mixing the salad and the dressing just before serving. When fresh this is terrific, but keeping it even overnight causes everything to wilt, making it unappetizing. CWCB volunteer diners rated the dish a 7 to 8. The use of cayenne pepper saves it from the blandness that characterizes much 19th century cooking, and even more could be used than Miss Leslie calls for.