the sown mixture of the hills behind Nice, in which chervil and roquette are compulsory and five lettuces the minimum, dressed with oil, vinegar, and a garlic-rubbed crust turned through the leaves
Origin: Nice, France
From the journey of Rocket.
Mesclun is not a category of salad but a specific thing, and the distinction has been comprehensively lost outside Nice. The word comes from the Niçois mesclumo, a mixture, and it describes seed sown together, cut young together, and sold together by the growers of the hills behind the town. To count as a true mesclun de Nice the mixture must contain chervil and roquette together with a minimum of five lettuces, and many Niçois insist on a considerably longer list taking in escarole, frisée, cutting chicory, and dandelion. What is sold in most of the world as mesclun is an assortment of leaves put in a bag after harvest, which is a different proposition entirely. Rocket is the compulsory hot element and cannot be omitted without the mixture losing its logic. The composition works on contrast: something peppery, something bitter, something aromatic, and several things mild, cut at the point where all of them are still tender. It is worth noticing that this is precisely the balance Pliny prescribed and Evelyn repeated, arrived at independently by market gardeners who are unlikely to have read either, which suggests the arrangement is a discovery about how leaves taste rather than an inheritance. The County of Nice was Italian-speaking and Savoyard until 1860, and the salad sits accordingly between two cuisines. Its dressing is French in its use of vinegar and Italian in its plainness. It is also the form in which rocket eventually crossed the Atlantic, since Californian growers in the 1970s took up the Niçois mixture rather than the single leaf.
The exact composition varies by grower and by season and no two Niçois will agree on it, but chervil and roquette are the two that must be present. If you cannot find chervil, use young flat-leaf parsley and a little tarragon, though the anise note of chervil is genuinely part of the character. Seed merchants sell mesclun de Nice mixtures for sowing, and growing it is much the easiest way to have the real thing, since it is ready to cut within a few weeks and can be cut repeatedly. Serve it as its own course after the main dish in the French manner, or alongside roast chicken. Avoid adding anything to it: cheese, nuts, and dried fruit all belong to other salads and obliterate the balance this one is built on.
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