Margaret Romaine
1 cup sliced apples 1 cup celery diced
WALDORF SALAD
1/2 cup walnut meats broken to pieces 1 tablespoon lemon juice ½ teaspoon salt 1 cup mayonnaise or boiled dressing Mix lightly apples, celery and nuts, being careful sprinkle with salt and add not to crush the fruit; dressing.
SAUCE
1 tablespoon butter 1 cup Cook's champagne 1 cup brown stock 1 tablespoon flour Cook butter and flour together, stir in slowly the brown stock; cook five minutes, remove from the fire and stir in the champagne.
These two recipes I like and can make myself.
Two short recipes from an actress who admits these are the ones she can manage herself: a Waldorf salad and a champagne pan sauce. Both are sound, and the sauce in particular is worth the trouble.
- Reading the salad methodThe directions have been jumbled between columns. In order: mix the apples, celery and nuts lightly, being careful not to crush the fruit; sprinkle with salt and add the dressing. The tablespoon of lemon juice is listed among the ingredients but is never assigned a place in the method.
- Salt quantityA tablespoon of lemon juice and a cup of dressing for two cups of fruit and celery is reasonable, but 1½ teaspoons of salt is heavy for this volume. Start with ½ teaspoon and taste.
- Boiled dressingThe alternative to mayonnaise here is a cooked dressing thickened with egg and flour, sharpened with vinegar and slackened with cream — closer to a modern sandwich spread than to vinaigrette. Plain mayonnaise, or mayonnaise loosened with a spoonful of cream, gives the intended effect.
- ApplesPeel and slice just before mixing and turn them in the lemon juice first to keep them pale. A firm, tart-sweet variety holds its shape; softer eating apples collapse into the dressing.
- "Cook's champagne"Cook's was a widely sold American sparkling wine of the period, not French champagne. Any dry sparkling wine works; the point is acidity and a little sweetness, so avoid anything labelled brut nature or extra dry in the sweet sense.
- Brown stockA dark veal or beef stock, browned bones and all, reduced and strained. Unsalted beef stock reduced by a third is the practical substitute; salt the finished sauce, not the stock.
- The hinge in the sauceThe champagne goes in off the heat and is not cooked again. That is the whole idea — the wine keeps its aroma and lift. Reheat gently if you must, but never let it boil.
- YieldThe salad serves four as a side. The sauce makes about two cups, enough for four to six servings of poached chicken, veal or fish.
Waldorf salad is generally traced to the Waldorf Hotel in New York in the mid-1890s, where the original was simply apple, celery and mayonnaise; the walnuts are a later addition that had become standard by the time cookbooks like this one appeared. Its arrival in a collection of actors' recipes makes sense — it needs no stove, no timing and no skill beyond a knife, which suited people who lived in hotels and boarding houses on tour. The champagne sauce belongs to the other half of that world: a cooked sauce finished with wine, the sort of thing served in the hotel dining room downstairs rather than made in a dressing room. Romaine's closing line, that these are the two she likes and can make herself, is the most honest sentence in many of these celebrity collections.