Salmagundi - 18th Century Salad of Many Things

In my summer search for salads, I came across an interesting spelling/error that brought me back to a dish that I wanted to look into for a while.  A Collection of Receipts in Cookery, Physick and Surgery - Part II was probably compiled by one Mary Kettilby and published in 1719.  Amongst the receipts or recipes are instructions “To make a Cold Hash or Salad-Magundy.” The dish described is a salad, by period and modern definitions, and its more standard eighteen century spelling “salmagundi” probably came from the same source as “salad”– Latin sal or “salt”.  The writer may not have known the origins of salad and salmagundi but the words look somewhat related and the concepts are so, in fact, thus the spelling “error” is understandable. There is a lot more to say about where the term salmagundi came from and went, but I leave a bit more on that for my notes.  For initial culinary purposes, it is sufficient to know that salmagundi was seemingly a popular dish, with many eighteenth-century cookery books having versions. Most break down to a seasoned mixture of minced poultry and seafood, served in the middle of a platter, surrounded by salad ingredients and a dressing. 

I present my version of salad-magundy/ salmagundi/ salamongundy/ Solomon Gundy etc., primarily based on Kettilby’s and “To Make Sallad-Magundy” from a slightly earlier influential text – Royal Cookery; or, The Complete Court-Cook by Patrick Lamb (1710). Following that, I will touch on other versions with some different ingredients and add my notes on possible connections around the word.

Salmagundi

Ingredients 

• 100g cooked chicken, dark meat, finely chopped
• 125g cooked chicken breast, sliced into long, thin strips
• 1 50g tin (approximately 10) anchovy fillets, drained – divided 
• 1 85g tin (approximately 10) smoked or pickled oysters, drained – divided
• 1 lemon – divided 
• 1 large handful parsley - divided
• 15g pickled cucumbers, ie. gherkins or dill pickles, finely chopped 
• 1 head romaine lettuce, halved, cored, and cut into pieces along its length
• ½ onion, cut into thin wedges and boiled for 30 seconds (See Notes)
• 110g cucumber cut into slices
• 10g capers
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp white wine vinegar

Instructions

Take 4 of the anchovy fillets, minced them finely, and put them in a medium bowl.

Do the same with 2 oysters, adding them to the same bowl.

Cut 1/3 off the side of your lemon.  Place that 1/3 cut side down on a cutting board (edged if possible) and working from the top, cut off the peel and as much of the pith as you can.  Working over the bowl with the anchovies and oysters to catch the juice, flick out any seeds with a small knife.  Returning to the cutting board, cut the lemon flesh as finely as possible and add to the bowl, along with any juices you have collected.

Finely chop 1/3 of your handful of parsley and add to the bowl.

Add the chopped dark chicken meat and pickled cucumber to the bowl and mix all until well combine.

On a circular platter, arrange your romaine lettuce pieces in a radial with the base ends in the centre and leaf ends pointing out.

Spoon your mixture from the bowl onto the centre of the platter in a mound.

Radiating from that centre mound, place your chicken breast strips evenly around the platter.

In between the chicken breast strips, place your remaining anchovy fillets.

Do the same with the remaining oysters.

Place your boiled onion slices between the spokes of chicken and anchovies you have created.

Place your cucumber slices, in groups, spaced evenly around the edge of the platter.

Slice the rest of your lemon thinly and also place around the edge of the platter, evenly.

Scatter the capers over the top.

Whisk your oil and vinegar together in a small bowl or shake together in a small glass jar. 

Serve your salad, dressing individual servings with the oil and vinegar.

Notes

While roughly going from proportions in the two primary recipes that served as inspiration, the final quantities of ingredients were based on my own tastes and access. Mine is smaller overall: for instance, the period recipes called for two chickens and I used about half a bird as a base.

I get my use of onions from Lamb’s version, including the boiling of them.  He, however, calls for onions “as big as the Yolk of Eggs.”  I did not have ready access to pearl or cipollini onions but using those would be more in the spirit of his dish. 

I looked at well over a dozen recipes for this dish in eighteenth-century texts, under almost as many variations of the name; each having varying degrees of different ingredients. Before exploring some of those recipes and ingredients I will first explain what I included in my version.  Most versions begin with a mixture based on finely chopped dark poultry meat – I used chicken, as Lamb calls for, while Kettilby says you can use turkey, chicken or, lacking those, veal. In that main mixture, I included the anchovies and lemon from both while taking pickled cucumber and oysters from one and parsley from the other.  I did not include egg yolk in the mixture as Lamb does, as I had just done a couple salads with eggs.  Around the central mixture, I used the white meat in slices with more anchovies and sliced lemon, then seasoned it with oil and vinegar, as instructed in both.  The capers came from one and onions from another. I did not include the pickled mushrooms called for in one (due to lack of time) or the optional scalded grapes, green beans, and “Station Flowers” (have not yet figured out what this refers to) from the other.  Lamb essentially shreds his lettuce and covers the bottom of the plate with it, while Kettilby adds it with the garnishes. I wanted a fair bit of it, so I used it as my bottom layer but kept the pieces quite large. 

Over the years, many other ingredients are included in the various recipes. Given as a possible base in Kettilby’s book, some of the earliest references I can find to “salmagundi” have turkey as their main ingredient. Elisha Cole’s An English Dictionary from 1677 simply says it is “a dish of cold Turky and other things,” while The Academy of Armory (1688), which includes many culinary definitions, says the same, incorrectly adding it is Italian. 

Moving out of the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth, one of the first version’s after Kettilby’s is Sarah Harrison’s in The House-Keeper's Pocket-Book (probably from 1733).  Her “Salimigundy” base meat is veal and instead of the minced anchovies you can use pickled herring.  She adds onions and apples to the mixture and her dressing includes mustard.   

The influential Hannah Wooley uses Lamb’s recipe almost word for word in her first edition of The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747), calling it “Salamongundy.”  However, she also includes a couple other versions.  In the second, she does not mix the minced ingredients like the meat - either chicken or veal - but stacks them in layers.  Sorrel, “Spinage,” and “Shalots” are somewhat unique minced additions, and an orange, horseradish, and barberries are different garnishes.  Herring and apples find a place in her third version along with novel additions of pickled red cabbage, pork, duck or pidgeon, as well as “Sallery.”  She adds a general guideline for all versions of this dish: “you may always make a Salamongundy of such things as you have, according to your Fancy.”

The last two Salamongundy recipes from
The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747)

James Jenks’ turkey “Salmagundi” includes the sea plant samphire and cloves in his 1768 The Complete Cook. The “Solomon-gundy” written down by Elizabeth Rafflald includes boiled ham and “a quarter of a Pound of Butter in the Shape of a Pine Apple”; it is found in her 1769 book, The Experienced English House-Keeper.  The evolution of the name into “Solomon Gundy” has a tail that I will touch on later.  In the same year, Elizabeth Moxon gives a “Solomon Gundy to eat in Lent” which is herring, anchovies, apple, onion, lemon peel, oysters, capers, and mushrooms.  She also has another version that includes among its ingredients: dried beef tongue, cockles and a large mango.  Both dishes are printed in her book English Housewifery.  Along with red cabbage, Charlotte Mason includes beet root in her salmagundi, as seen in The Lady's Assistant for Regulating and Supplying Her Table (1773).  A large volume of recipes continues through the end of the century, when the term “salmagundi” began to be used more in a newer sense – an, often haphazard, mix of different things.  A literary magazine by American Washington Irving took the name in 1807, for instance.

Staying with the word but moving back to its English beginnings: it comes into that language like many things, from neighbouring French. Salmigondis, pronounced very similar, meant “seasoned salt meats” in period French and was earlier spelled salmigondin.  Some research takes that word back to Latin Latin sal – "salt" - and condire  - "to season, flavor." The latter is from whence we get “condiment.”  

When “salmagundi” was established as a dish in English, the term, as I mentioned, came to mean a figurative mix of lots of things.  In one of its forms, it also gave its name, I believe, to a couple of other foods.  You can buy Jamaican “Solomon Gundy” today – it is a spicy paste made of smoked red herring, scallions, vinegar, Scotch Bonnet peppers, allspice, nutmeg, and other ingredients.  The Jamaican twist on the base of an eighteenth-century English salmagundi seems clear.  Also using herring is a product from another British colony: Nova Scotian Solomon Gundy.  A simple recipe for it contains: the salted version of the fish, onion, vinegar, and pickling spice.  The French of portion of this product's label says: "Salmigondis" linking the name back to its pre-English origins. 

Moving beyond food a bit, there is one last word link I would like to explore.  Solomon Grundy, with an “r”, shows up as a cook in a novel called The Buccaneer from 1833. At one point the character is labeled as a “gratified compounder of kitchen stuff.” I would think there would have to be a link to the very similarly named dishes.  

In that context, a few years later a poem, probably much older, is published:

Solomon Grundy,

Born on Monday,

Christened on Tuesday,

Married on Wednesday,

Took ill on Thursday,

Worse on Friday,

Died on Saturday,

Buried on Sunday;

That was the end

Of Solomon Grundy.

This comes from The Nursery Rhymes of England (1843) by James Orchard Halliwell (later Phillips).  The name was given to a dead but reanimated character faced by the Green Lantern in an issue of DC’s All-American Comics from 1944.  Solomon Grundy has appeared in many DC properties since and: “Superman never made any money / Savin' the world from Solomon Grundy,” in a 90s song by the Crash Test Dummies. All this leads me to saying: I would love to find or be told about a definitive link between the foods and the poem at some point.

Speaking of food and my dish in particular, I will end by saying it was a very good salad.  Lots of salt and umami from the seafood and brightness from capers and lemon.  The pâté-like minced centre was savoury and lettuce and cucumber provided texture and relief from some big flavours. It was almost a proto-chicken Caesar salad and could have used some bread or croutons.   Next week is up in the air, as I will be cooking a 10lbs pork shoulder the same day. 

9 Salad Rules from John Evelyn (1699)

With apologies for life getting busy and missing a week, we forge ahead with more summery historical thoughts on salad. Last entry, I mentioned that salads were regular inclusions in seventeenth century banquets and bills of fare.  However, in most cookery books, greens were an afterthought and actual recipes were pretty rare.   

There are exceptions: Sugar merchant Thomas Tryon, had religious experiences in the 1650s that prompted him to become an animal rights advocate and vegetarian. He later wrote several self-help books, the most read being The Way to Health, Long Life and Happiness (1683).  Amongst those writings were a lot of instructions for preparing vegetables and even salads.  Another appreciator of greens from later in the century was John Evelyn, a courtier who helped found the scientific Royal Society while being a regular diarist and prolific gardener along the way.  The last activity partially prompted him to write his most famous work - Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees and the Propagation of Timber (1664) but also Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets (1699).  Acetaria is a Latin word for salad coming from acetum – vinegar - and this text is probably the first English book wholly devoted to the topic.

My recipe for this week is not a recipe adaption per se.  In Acetaria, Evelyn gives nine steps for making excellent salads. I adapt those steps with ingredients he mentions, trying to create a salad that would be period accurate.  After presenting the recipe for that salad, I will give some notes on the ingredients and the steps. 

A Sallet with Two Dressings 

(Mostly) Following John Evelyn’s Nine Rules and Ingredients

Ingredients

• 7 or 8 inner leaves of Romaine lettuce, torn into bite-size pieces
• ½ bulb of fennel, cored and cut into bite-size pieces 
• 2 large handfuls of spinach, large leaves chopped 
• 1 large handful of radish tops
• ¼ cup of loose packed tarragon leaves
• 6 green onions, green parts only, cut in 1cm pieces on the diagonal
• 1 small handful of English parsley, chopped 
• 4 eggs, hard-boiled and peeled

Farmer's market eggs

Fresh grown parsley 

Tops from radishes

Instructions

In a large pot of boiling water, blanch the lettuce and fennel for 30 seconds.

Refresh under cold running water, drain, and dry with paper towels or a salad spinner.

In a large bowl, toss all ingredients up to the eggs.

Not in a bowl but greens presented for easier viewing

Quarter the eggs reserving two of the yolks for the dressings (below). 

Dress a salad portion with one of the two dressings, add some egg quarters as well as some remaining egg whites and serve.

Ingredients for the dressings: English mustard 
powder, sea salt, and black pepper

Olive oil, and orange and rosemary 
vinegars (with infusions)

Rosemary Vinegar Dressing

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp rosemary vinegar (see Notes)
• 3 tbsp olive oil 
• 1 hard-boiled egg yolk
• ½ tsp mustard powder
• Good sea salt and cracked black pepper to taste

Instructions 

Whisk all ingredients together in a small bowl until emulsified. 

Orange Vinegar Dressing

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp orange vinegar (see Notes)
• 1 hard-boiled egg yolk
• 3 tbsp olive oil 
• Pinch of sugar
• Good sea salt and cracked black pepper to taste

Instructions 

Whisk all ingredients together in a small bowl until emulsified.

Notes

Immediately before setting forth his nine points on salads in Acetaria, John Evelyn presents a list of seventy-six vegetables, which he presumably could grow in England.  Immediately after, he provides a chart showing how and when thirty-five of those can be prepared.  Working from the latter chart (above) I chose a number of greens that I had access to and prepared them as the chart indicated.  At the top left you can see “Roman” or romaine “Lettuce” and “Sweet-fennel” are one of nine greens that are to be “Blanch’d.”  The rest of my salad ingredients were left “Green Unblanch’d.”

The dressing components come from the various rules John Evelyn set out. Rule II makes it clear that the oil should be olive oil, preferably from green or unripe or “Omphacine” olives.  Most olive oil today comes from a mix of black and green olives; I used the best extra virgin olive oil I had. 

The use of rosemary and orange vinegars are based on rule III, where he says to use “the best Wine Vinegar…Aromatiz'd, and impregnated” with various ingredients.  I steeped a rosemary sprig and orange peel in two small jars of white wine vinegar for 24 hours to make mine, but they could be bought as well, in theory.

Evelyn, knowing Latin, would therefore understand that the word “sallet,” ultimately comes from sal – salt. This seems to be reflected in the lengthy explanation in rule IV, the one that demands the highest quality of “Bay grey-Salt.”  Bay salt in this context just means evaporated sea salt as opposed to mined rock salt. I did not have time to access flakey sel gris or similar Malden salt, so I used Sicilian sea salt, which worked fine as I just whisked it in with the dressing. As part of this rule, he also says sugar can be added, it is after all “by some call'd Indian-Salt.”

Rule V is about “another notable ingredient” – mustard.  He is very particular about its preparation and the location in which it is grown but also says that better than any mustard is ground nasturtium seeds.  I again could not source those in time, so I used good quality English mustard powder.

“The Pepper (white or black) be not bruis'd to too small a Dust” states rule VI, hence my call for it being coarsely ground in the recipe. Pimpinella saxifrage, a plant native to Europe, Evelyn considers a preferred substitute, and he also mentions other seasonings like juniper berries and Jamaica-pepper (allspice). This is also from where I got the use of orange peel in one of my dressings. He ends by warning against the use of saffron, despite the fact that “those of Spain and Italy…generally make use of this Flower, mingling its golden Tincture with almost every thing they eat.”  He says: “its being so apt to prevail above every thing with which 'tis blended, we little incourage its admittance into our Sallet.” This is an interesting departure from medieval recipes or even those of someone like Robert May who would include saffron, probably because it showed how wealthy the noble serving it was.  

The use of eggs, both in the dressing and quartered in the salad comes from rule VII.

The remaining three rules are not about ingredients but the method and tools for their preparation. Rule I states that your greens be picked, cleaned and then washed by sprinkling with spring water rather than being “over-much sob’d” or soaked.  He also knew that salad leaves need to be well drained and dried to allow the flavour of the dressing to come out. 

Rule VII is less applicable today when knives are made of stainless steel and other modern materials.  He says your knife must be silver to avoid it rusting and leaving a metallic taste on your ingredients. 

Similarly, “Ninthly and Lastly,” your salad dishes must be made of porcelain or the relatively new tin-glazed Delftware from Holland.  Again, this is to prevent metal dishes from leaving a taste on your salad.  

In summary. the nine rules for John Evelyn’s perfect salads are:

I. Clean, wash and dry well your leaves 

II. Dress with the best olive oil

III. Mix that with infused wine vinegar

IV. Season it with fine flaky sea salt 

V. Add good mustard powder

VI. And coarse ground pepper

VII. Use hard-boiled egg yolk in the dressing to thicken and add quartered eggs to the salad.

VIII. Cut your ingredients with a silver knife.

IX. Serve your salad in porcelain dishes.

The rules that are still applicable are not surprising to us as modern readers, that is probably because Evelyn was well on his way towards thinking of salads as we do today. As I said earlier, this was probably the first English book devoted to what is an important component of a modern meal or in many cases, makes up its entirety.  It was therefore quite forward thinking to treat these ingredients with the detail that he does in Acetaria, his discourse on salads. 

My salad was wonderfully fresh and bright with a variety of tastes and even textures.  I like fennel a lot and the short blanch on it and the lettuce brought out some additional flavour while the other greens kept up the crispy texture.  The egg yolk in the dressing helps it cling to the greens and the infused vinegars added another dimension.

Since things are starting to finally grow a bit around here, I might stay green and vegetative for next week’s entry.