A Forgotten 18th Recipe for a Grand Colorful Salad Known as ‘Salamagundy’
In the series Food That Time Forgot", historianJon Townsend reached back to an 18th century recipe for a forgotten dish known as Salamagundy, a grand salad that contained a vast array of colorful savory ingredients that were arranged just so.
It would have a base, sometimes of greens. It didn'talways have to have greens, but it usually hadmeat products. It would have pickled products. ...They would makethis into a huge and very colorful dish. It was very important for it to have allthese different colors and that it would be put together in a very very spectacular kind of way.
Townsend talked about a recipe from the1793 cookbook The House-Keeper's Pocket-Book and Compleat Family Cook by Sarah Harrison. The recipe called for roast turkey cooked with anchovies, pickled oysters, and mushrooms.
Mince the white of a cold turkey that has been roastedwith eight anchovies, eight pickled oysters, sixpickled cucumbers, minced all small. Lay it all ona dish handsomely. Lay around all sorts of picklesand mushrooms, cloves, capers, samphire and set it by oil and vinegar. This is proper to a cold treat.
The recipe he prepared, however, was from the 1747 cookbook The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse with a bit of influence from from the 1814 cookbook A New System of Domestic Cookery by Maria Eliza Rundell.
Mince veal or a fowl very small. A pickled herringboned and picked small. Cucumber minced small. Apples minced small. An onion peeled and minced small. Some pickled red cabbage, chopped small. Cold pork minced small or a cold duckor pigeons minced small Boiled parsley chopped fine. Celery cut small. Yolks of hard eggs choppedsmall. The whites chopped small. Either lay allthe ingredients by themselves separate on saucersor in heaps in a dish. Lay them out with whatpickles you have and sliced lemon nicely cut. If you get stertion flowers lay them around. Makes a fine middle dish for supper but you may alwaysmake salamagundy of such things as you have.