Chicken salad is often made with lettuce instead of celery. Marinate the chicken alone; add it to the small tender leaves (uncut) of the lettuce the last moment before serving; then pour Mayonnaise dressing over the top. Garnish with little centre-heads of lettuce, capers, cold chopped red beets if you choose, or sliced hard-boiled eggs. Sometimes little strips of anchovy are added for a garnish. When on the table it should all be mixed together. Many may profit by this receipt for chicken salad; for it is astonishing how few understand making so common a dish. It is generally minced, and mixed with hard-boiled eggs, etc., for a dressing.
Chicken Salad (Carême’s Receipt).
Take some tender pullets; fry them in the sauté pan, or roast them; when cold, cut them up, skinning and trimming them neatly. Put the pieces into a tureen, with some salt, pepper, oil, vinegar, some sprigs of parsley, and an onion cut into slices; mix all well together; cover, and let stand for some hours; then, just before serving, drain the salad, taking care to remove all bits of onion, etc., and place it tastefully on lettuce-leaves, with the hearts of the lettuce on top, and cover with a Mayonnaise dressing.
Mayonnaise of Salmon.
Remove the skin and bones from a piece of salmon, boiled and cooled, and cut it into pieces two inches long. Marinate them, i. e., place them in a dish, and season them with salt, pepper, a little oil, and, in this case, plenty of vinegar, some parsley, and a little onion cut up; then cover, and let them stand two or three hours. In the mean time, cut up some hard-boiled eggs into four or eight pieces for a border. Cover the bottom of the salad-dish with lettuce-leaves, seasoned with a French dressing; place your salmon slices in a ring on the lettuce, pouring in the centre a Mayonnaise sauce. Sprinkle capers over the whole.
Other kinds of fish, such as pike, blue-fish, and flounders, make very good salads, arranged in the same way. Carême, Gouffé, and Francatelli fry their fish and fowl in a sauté pan, instead of boiling them. If you do not make use of remnants of salmon left from the table, you can form better-shaped slices by cutting the fish into little shapes before it is boiled. If you wish to boil them, immerse them in warm water (with vinegar and salt added) in a wire basket, or drainer.
Salad à la Filley.
Ingredients: Cottage cheese, hard-boiled egg, cives.
Arrange cives on a salad-dish in such a manner as to form a nest; put into the nest whole hard-boiled eggs (shelled), one for each person at table, alternated with little round cakes of cottage cheese. In serving, place upon each plate an egg, a cake of cottage cheese, and some of the cives. Each person cuts all together, and puts on the French dressing of oil, vinegar, pepper and salt.
