Salade Francillon

Name: Salade Francillon
Cuisine: Japan
Ingredients: 4 pints (2.3 litres) mussels; Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper; 2 oz (50 g) black truffles, thinly sliced; 2 fl oz (50 ml) white wine vinegar; 2 shallots, finely chopped; 2 tablespoons chives, finely chopped; 2 tablespoons parsley, finely chopped; 5 fl oz (150 ml) olive oil; 2 pints (1.1 litres) meat stock; 1 pint (570 ml) champagne; 2 lb (900 g) very small new potatoes

Preparation info

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

The Potato Year

By Lucy Madden

Published 2015

About

This luxurious salad is for the seriously rich. Also known as Japanese salad, it was all the rage among fashionable Parisians in the late nineteenth century. It was first described in Francillon, a play by Alexandre Dumas, fils, although it is not known if it was his invention.

Ingredients

2 lb (900 g) very small new potatoes
4 pints (2.3

Asia
Japan
February
Christmas

Method

Scrub the mussels, rinsing them several times in cold water and remove the beards. Put them in a wide pan with half the champagne and the shallots. Cover the pan and cook over a high heat until the shells open. Discard any unopened mussels. When cool, remove the mussels from the shells.

Boil the potatoes in the stock until tender. Drain them and slice thinly. Marinade in the remaining c