An Excellent Boiled Salad is a traditional Elizabethan recipe for a salad of boiled spinach with currants served on toasted bread. The full recipe is presented here and I hope you enjoy this classic Elizabethan version of: Sauce for An Excellent Boiled Salad.
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Original Recipe
An Excellent Boiled Salad (English Houswife)
To make an excellent compound boil'd Sallat: take of Spinage well washt two or three handfuls, and put it into faire water and boile it till it bee exceeding soft and tender as pappe; then put it into a Cullander and draine the water from it, which done, with the backside of your Chopping-knife chop it and bruise it as small as may bee: then put it into a Pipkin with a good lump of sweet butter and boile it over again; then take a good handfull of Currants cleane washt and put to it, and stirre them well together, then put to as much Vinegar as will make it reasonable tart, and then with sugar season it according to the taste of the Master of the house, and so serve it upon sippets.
Boil some water in a pan and add the spinach to this. Boil for 3 minutes then drain and immediately rinse under cold water. Wring the spinach to drain and chop finely before heating the butter in a frying pan.
Add the spinach to the butter and after about a minute add the currants. Fry for a further two minutes then add the vinegar and sugar. Toss the ingredients together and spoon over sippets (toasted slices of bread quartered into triangles).
