This simple old-fashioned salad is the sort of thing you would have had for tea on a visit to your Granny on a Sunday evening – perhaps with a slice of meat left over from the Sunday joint. It is one of my absolute favourites. It can be quite delicious made with a crisp lettuce, good home-grown tomatoes and cucumbers, free-range eggs and home-preserved beetroot. If, on the other hand, you make it with pale battery eggs, watery tomatoes, tired lettuce and cucumber and (worst of all) vinegary beetroot from a jar, you'll wonder why you bothered. We serve this traditional salad as a starter in Ballymaloe, with an old-fashioned salad dressing which would have been popular before the days of mayonnaise. This recipe for salad dressing, came from Lydia Strangman, the last occupant of our house.

Ingredients

Serves 4

  • 2 free-range eggs
  • 1 butterhead lettuce (the ordinary lettuce that one can buy everywhere)
  • 4 tiny scallions or spring onions
  • watercress sprigs
  • 2–4 tomatoes, quartered
  • 16 slices of cucumber
  • 4 tablespoons (5 American tablespoons) Pickled Beetroot and Onion Salad (see
  • recipe)
  • 4 sliced radishes
  • chopped parsley

Lydia Strangman's cream dressing:

  1. 2 eggs, free-range if possible
  2. 1 tablespoon (1 1/4 American tablespoons) dark soft brown sugar
  3. pinch of salt
  4. 1 level teaspoon dry mustard
  5. 1 tablespoon (1 1/4 American tablespoons) brown malt vinegar
  6. 50–125ml (2–4fl oz/1/4 – generous 1/2 cup) cream

Method

  1. Hard-boil the eggs for the salad and the dressing (four in total). Bring a small saucepan of water to the boil, gently slide in the eggs and boil for 10 minutes (12 if they are very fresh). Strain off the hot water and cover with cold water. Peel when cold.
  2. Wash and dry the lettuce, scallions and watercress.
  3. Next make the cream dressing. Cut two of the eggs in half and sieve the yolks into a bowl. Add the sugar, a pinch of salt and the mustard. Blend in the vinegar and cream.
  4. Chop the egg whites and add some to the sauce. Keep the rest to scatter over the salad.
  5. Cover the dressing until needed.
  6. To assemble the salads, first arrange a few lettuce leaves on each of four plates. Scatter with a few tomato quarters and two hard-boiled egg quarters, a few slices of cucumber and a radish on each plate, and (preferably just before serving) add a slice of beetroot to each. Garnish with scallions and watercress.
  7. Scatter the remaining egg white (from the dressing) and some chopped parsley over the salad.
  8. Put a tiny bowl of cream dressing in the centre of each plate and serve immediately, while the salad is crisp and before the beetroot starts to run.
  9. Alternatively, serve the dressing from one large bowl.
  10. Note: Nowadays we serve the hard-boiled eggs for the salad slightly soft in the centre – cook for seven minutes instead of 10. The eggs for the dressing, on the other hand, need to be hard-boiled as above.

For the alternative salad dressing:

  1. Put the salt, sugar, mustard and oil into a bowl and stir into a smooth paste, then gradually whisk in the eggs, vinegar and milk.
  2. Put the bowl in a saucepan of boiling water over the fire and stir until it thickens like custard. Bottle when cold and cork tightly.