Water Cresses
Wash the clusters carefully and put aside all leaves that are discolored. Place in a salad bowl and pour over it a French dressing, which has had a very little bit of toasted herring, picked into small pieces, added to it. Only enough to give it a flavor. This dressing is also very nice for field -Mrs. A. Fairchild, New York. lettuce.
A one-line salad whose only real trick is the smoked fish worked into the dressing. Two things in the original need translating: what "French dressing" meant in 1900, and what "toasted herring" was.
- French dressing, 1900 senseNot the sweet orange bottled dressing. It means a plain vinaigrette: roughly three parts oil to one part vinegar, salt and pepper, whisked or shaken to combine, made fresh and used at once.
- Toasted herringMost likely a smoked herring of some kind — a bloater, kipper or red herring — held near the fire or under a grill until the skin blistered and the oil ran, then boned and flaked. A kipper fillet or a couple of oil-packed smoked sprats will do the same job. The point is salt and smoke; the recipe asks only for 'enough to give it a flavor', so a scant teaspoon of flakes in a half-cup of dressing is plenty, and the salt in the fish means holding back on salt in the vinaigrette.
- Sourcing the cressBuy cultivated watercress. Cress gathered from wild streams and ditches can carry liver fluke and whatever is upstream of it, which is why the older books are so insistent about washing; washing does not remove the risk.
- Washing and dryingSwish the bunches in a deep bowl of cold water so grit falls away rather than being rubbed back in, lift them out, and repeat until the water runs clear. Dry thoroughly — wet leaves shed the dressing and thin it.
- Dress at the tableWatercress collapses within minutes of meeting oil and vinegar. Pour over the dressing immediately before serving, toss lightly, and do not make it ahead.
- The garbled last lineThe closing sentence has been mangled in the original typesetting; the attribution to Mrs. A. Fairchild has been dropped into the middle of it. It should read that the dressing is also very nice for field lettuce — mâche, or corn salad.
- YieldNo quantity is given. Two generous bunches of watercress and about a half-cup of dressing will serve four as a side salad.
Watercress (Nasturtium officinale) was one of the cheapest green things in the nineteenth-century city, sold in bunches on the street in London and New York and eaten by people who could afford little else. The dressing here belongs to a broader habit of the period, in which a scrap of cured fish — herring in the north, or an anchovy-based bottled sauce — was used less as an ingredient than as a seasoning, a way of adding savour before anyone had a word for it. Salt herring in its various smoked forms was among the most widely available preserved fish in Atlantic ports, so its appearance in a New York contributor's recipe is unremarkable. The attribution to Mrs. A. Fairchild is typical of turn-of-the-century compilations like this one, which gathered their contents from readers and local subscribers rather than from a single author.