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Cucumber Salad
Select 3 firm cucumbers, peel and cut into halves lengthwise. Scoop out the seeds, and then lay them on ice for half an hour. Make a filling of very finely chopped celery and blanched walnut meats, also chopped. Mix thoroughly with a French dressing, then fill the cucumber shells about fifteen minutes before serving, and place a piece of parsley at each end of the stuffed cucumbers.
A stuffed-cucumber salad from the era when cold vegetables were served as edible containers. The whole thing hinges on timing: the shells are filled only fifteen minutes before they go to the table, or the dressing draws water out of the cucumber and the filling slumps.
- CucumbersStandard field cucumbers of the period were thick and seedy, which is why the recipe has you scoop them. Modern English or seedless cucumbers make shallow shells; a large ordinary cucumber, halved lengthwise, gives a better trough.
- "Lay them on ice"This means chilling directly on cracked ice for firmness and crispness. Thirty minutes in the coldest part of the refrigerator does the same job. Drain and pat the hollows dry before filling.
- Blanched walnut meatsBlanching here means loosening and removing the papery brown skin, which carries most of the bitterness: pour boiling water over the shelled nuts, stand a minute, drain and rub. Toasting is a modern alternative but changes the flavour.
- French dressingIn American books of this period that generally means a simple oil-and-vinegar dressing, commonly somewhere between two and four parts oil to one of vinegar with salt and pepper, shaken rather than emulsified with egg. Some period versions also add mustard or paprika; the recipe gives no indication either way.
- ProportionsNone are given. Aim for roughly equal volumes of chopped celery and walnuts, about a cup of each for three cucumbers, dressed with two to three tablespoons of dressing so the filling is moistened rather than swimming.
- Cutting the celeryCut small, no more than a quarter inch, and take the strings off the outer ribs. Coarse celery makes the filling impossible to eat neatly out of a curved shell.
- Yield and serviceThree cucumbers give six halves, so six small salad portions. Serve on a bed of lettuce or watercress if you want the halves to sit steady on the plate.
Stuffed cucumber halves belong to the elaborate cold-salad style that filled American household manuals between about 1890 and 1920, when a salad was expected to be constructed and garnished rather than tossed. Celery and walnuts were a fashionable pairing of the period, appearing in numerous "nut salads," and the two were valued as much for contrasting crunch as for flavour. The parsley sprig at each end is table decoration of the era, when even a plain vegetable dish was expected to arrive dressed for company. The recipe's complete absence of quantities assumes a reader who already knew what a French dressing was and how much filling a cucumber would hold.