As the intense heat of summer blasts its way through Virginia, temperatures here are already hovering on the edge of record-breaking three digits and it's not even July. This is the very kind of heat we moved away from South Georgia to escape. But contrary to what some of our friends back in Savannah seem to think, The Old Dominion is still The South, and we were well aware that it never has been immune to that infamous Deep South summer heat.
One lovely way that old Virginians once dealt with that heat at the table was Salmagundi, an elegant composed salad that was as beautiful to look at as it was delicious.
Composed salads like this one seem quite modern, and yet people are often surprised to learn that it was old when English Colonials first settled in this place and decided to call it "Virginia." The reason for that surprise is the popular supposition that the progress of cooking through history has been linear, advancing in a straight trajectory from camp-fire-roasted hunks of meat and hot-stone-baked flatbreads to dazzling innovations that have only recently become possible thanks to modern appliances. It's a nice idea, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Actually, when it comes to cooking, there's very little that's really new, those modern appliances notwithstanding, and culinary history is less a trajectory than a wide, spiraling loop. Often something we think of as modern has really been around for a very long time, and isn't so much being invented as rediscovered.
Salmagundi is one of those things. An elegant composition of salad greens, cold meat, hard-cooked eggs, onions, piquant pickles, and anchovies, it was an old concept when the South's premier food writer, Mary Randolph, published this recipe for it two hundred years ago:
"Salmagundi.
Turn a bowl on the dish, and put on it, in regular rings, beginning at the bottom, the following ingredients, all minced: anchovies with the bones taken out, the white meat of fowls, without the skin, hard boiled eggs, the yelks and whites chopped separately, parsley, the lean of old ham scraped, the inner stalks of celery; put a row of capers round the bottom of the bowl, and dispose the others in a fanciful manner; put a little pyramid of butter on the top, and have a small glass with egg mixed as for sallad to eat with the salmagundi."
Mary Randolph, The Virginia House-Wife, 1824.
The salad Mrs. Randolph described had been around for at least a century when she committed her recipe to paper. Her rendition differs from those older recipes in two ways. First, it was composed on an inverted bowl instead of a bed of salad greens, as the older recipes had directed, and in fact contained no greens at all other than parsley.
Her other digression is a dressing that was thickened with hard-cooked egg yolks ("a small glass with egg mixed as for sallad"—the directions for which were found elsewhere in her book). Older authors called for a simple dressing of oil and lemon juice or vinegar.
This handsome dish remained popular in Virginia until late in the nineteenth century, when its star waned. But it enjoyed a revival in the mid-twentieth century, especially in Colonial Williamsburg, where a simplified version was served at some of the historic taverns.
In recent years, its popularity has taken another downward turn, but it still appears from time to time in cooking magazines and the plethora of cooking blogs that can be found on line. It's often glibly (and inaccurately) called "an eighteenth century version of chef's salad," but it actually has more in common with a classic Cobb salad, or that ever-popular Southern covered-dish-supper offering, the layered salad.
While there are historical recipes in which the chicken and ham (if it's included) are cut into strips as they are in a chef's salad, more often the ingredients are chopped fine as Mrs. Randolph directed. Also, the old Salmagundi recipes but rarely contained cheese whereas chef's salads do almost by definition.
Probably the comparison comes from the way Salmagundi is presented when it does turn up in a modern setting, with the meat cut into strips, the eggs into rings that aren't separated, and the anchovies and pickles left whole.
Well, it doesn't really matter whether one gives this lovely composed salad a strict or loose historical interpretation: What does matter is that it's well worth rediscovering in the hot summer days that lie ahead.
And I've just picked up some nice cooked country ham and a lovely fat roasting chicken that's going into the oven this evening. Sunday night Salmagundi seems like a nice way to revive an old tradition for beating the heat in our adopted homeland.
Traditional Salmagundi
This is how I make this salad, based on Mrs. Randolph's recipe and one from Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery, an eighteenth century English cookbook that was popular in Virginia, of which there were numerous editions with (I'm told) at least three different versions of this salad.
Just as I'm not when I make it, you needn't feel bound by history, nor by me: Make it your own, adding sweet or sour gherkin pickles, bread and butter pickles, pitted olives, blanched haricots verts, small spinach leaves, and radishes cut into quarters. You might also change up the meat to cold roast beef, veal, venison, or lamb. A cup of crumbled blue or goat cheese would also be lovely, especially if the roast is one of those red meats.
Serves 4-6
1 3½-4 pound cooked chicken or 2 pounds (boneless weight) cooked chicken breast
1 heart of romaine lettuce
1 head Boston or Bibb lettuce
2 cups watercress (optional), stemmed
1 bunch parsley
4-6 small stalks from heart of a head of celery
4 hard-cooked eggs
2½-3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice or herb vinegar
Salt
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
Whole black pepper in a mill
2 lemons
1 cup baked country ham, sliced, trimmed, and chopped (available here in Virginia at many supermarket delis; other baked ham may be substituted)
16 whole anchovy fillets packed in olive oil, drained and blotted to remove excess oil
½ cup halved and thinly sliced shallots
3-4 tablespoons brine-cured capers, drained
4-8 tablespoons salted butter, softened
1. Skin, bone, and trim the chicken meat. Roughly chop it. Wash and dry the salad greens and parsley. Stem the watercress. Slice the celery hearts. Peel and halve the eggs and separate the whites and yolks, then separately chop them.
2. Make the dressing: whisk together the lemon juice or vinegar, a pinch of salt, and the mustard. Gradually whisk in the oil until it's emulsified and thick. Taste and season with salt and pepper as needed.
3. Just before serving, slice the ends from one lemon without cutting all the way through to pulp. Cut in half crosswise and scoop out the pulp, creating a hollowed cup from the rind. Roughly chop the pulp. Thinly slice the remaining lemon. Cut the lettuce into fine chiffonade, preferably with a ceramic knife so it's edges don't brown, and mix it with the watercress. Mince the parsley.
4. Spread the mixed greens (except the parsley) on a platter. Arrange the sliced lemon around the edge, then arrange the chicken, ham, egg yolks and whites, parsley, celery, most of the anchovies, and the shallots in concentric rings or stripes over the greens. Scatter 2 tablespoons of the capers and chopped lemon pulp over all. Mound the butter into 1 (or both if small) of the hollowed out lemon rind cups and place them in the center of the salad. Arrange more capers and the remaining anchovies around the butter.
5. Give the dressing a quick whisk to re-emulsify it and serve the salad at once with the dressing passed separately.
Twentieth Century Salmagundi
Simpler in its preparation and arrangement, this is how Salmagundi used to be served at Christiana Campbell's Tavern in Colonial Williamsburg. Adapted from The Williamsburg Cookbook (1971).
Serves 6 as a main dish
Salad greens (Boston, romaine, endive, water cress, etc.) washed and dried
1 pound baked country ham (available in Virginia at many supermarket delis; other baked ham can be substituted), thinly sliced
1 pound cooked chicken or turkey breast, skinned, boned, and thinly sliced
4 hard-cooked eggs, sliced
16 sweet gherkin pickles
8 small ribs celery from the pale, tender heart
16 small sardines packed in olive oil, drained and blotted to remove excess oil
16 anchovy filets packed in olive oil, drained and blotted to remove excess oil
1½ teaspoons salt
¾ teaspoon freshly ground white pepper
½ cup cider vinegar (lemon juice or wine vinegar or a combination of both may be substituted)
1½ cups extra-virgin olive oil or vegetable oil
1. Cut or tear enough washed and dried salad greens into bite sized pieces to make 10 cups. Mix them together and arrange them on a platter. Cut the ham and poultry into strips. Decoratively arrange the ham, poultry, eggs, pickles, celery hearts, sardines, and anchovies on top of the greens.
2. Put the salt, pepper, and vinegar in a glass jar with a tight-fitting lid. Stir until the salt is dissolved. Add the oil, cover tightly, and shake until well blended. Sprinkle some of the dressing over the salmagundi and pour the remaining dressing into a sauce boat or bowl. Serve at once with the extra dressing passed separately.