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Introducing the Great Fuel Foods: Fats: French
APPLE-AND-CELERY SALAD 1 cup of apple (peeled and cut (inner stalks cut in one- in half-inch cubes) fourth inch slices) 1/2 tablespoonful of lemon French or mayonnaise dressing juice as desired 1/2 to 1 full cup of tender celery Mix the apple and lemon juice, to keep the apple from discoloring, then mix the apple and celery with French dressing. Use lemon juice instead of vinegar, in making the dressing, and allow for the lemon juice poured over the apple when it was cut. Instead of French dressing, mayonnaise may be used. One-fourth a cup of walnut meats, broken in pieces, may be added with the celery.
GERMAN APPLE CUP (BOSTON HOTEL) Select fine-grained apples, one for each service; core and pare, leaving on a section of the skin, in the shape of a ring, near one end of the apple. Cut heart-stalks of celery very fine, but do not chop it; mix the celery with mayonnaise dressing, to which half the bulk of whipped cream has been added; add also more salt and pepper. Use this mixture to fill the hollow centers of the apples, rounding it up above the apple a little; in the center of the mixture in each apple set a tiny heart-leaf of lettuce. Dispose the apples on heart-leaves of lettuce and serve at once. The ring of apple skin gives a little color to the dish; the end of the apple on which it is left should be upward. To serve in perfection, when coring the apple, remove all the seed cavities. If the apples must stand after paring, rub over the exposed surfaces very lightly with the cut side of a lemon. This will prevent discoloration. FLEUR-DE-LIS SALAD, MURRAY'S RESTAURANT, NEW YORK Cut either oranges or grapefruit in halves, crosswise. With a sharp-pointed knife cut around the pulp in each section of the fruit. Also cut the membrane separating the sections and the core from the skin and remove all the membrane and core in one piece. Sprinkle over the pulp, thus left in the fruit skin, a few sliced walnut or pecan meats and a little French dressing. Set the halves of the fruit, thus prepared, on individual plates and in the center of each set half a dozen heart-leaves of French endive in an upright position, to imitate the fleur-de-lis.
ASTORIA SALAD, REVISED 1 head of endive A narrow strip of red pepper 1/2 grapefruit 2 tablespoonfuls of olive oil 1/2 an orange The juice of the fruit 2 halves of fresh or canned 1/4 teaspoonful of salt pear Paprika if desired A narrow strip of green pepper Remove the pulp from the grapefruit and orange without taking the membrane. Cut the pear in lengthwise slices. Cut the endive in halves, lengthwise, discard outer coarse leaves, wash with great care and wipe each leaf. Dispose the halves of endive on individual plates (these will resemble a spread fan), set the slices of pear, one almost overlapping another, lengthwise, at the root end of the endive; back of these, in the same way, the sections of orange pulp, with the sections of grapefruit just above the tips of the leaves. To the juice add the olive oil and salt; beat together vigorously, pour over the salad and serve at once.
Four fruit salads from the chapter on fats, where the dressing rather than the fruit is the point. All are written for two servings; scale by the plate rather than the cup.
- Why these sit under "Fats"The apple, celery and citrus are carriers. The nutritive interest to the author is the olive oil in the French dressing and the egg-and-oil emulsion in the mayonnaise, so do not skimp the dressing or the recipes lose their reason for being in the book.
- French dressing hereIn this book's period this means a plain vinaigrette of oil, acid, salt and pepper, beaten until cloudy and used at once. Nothing sweet, no tomato, no emulsifier. The Astoria dressing is only 2 tablespoons of oil to whatever juice the fruit gives up in the cutting, which can come out sharp; taste and add oil if it bites.
- The apple-and-celery quantitiesThe ingredient column has been scrambled in printing. Read it as 1 cup apple in half-inch cubes, 1/2 tablespoon lemon juice, and 1/2 to 1 cup inner celery stalks sliced a quarter inch thick, with dressing as desired.
- Lemon on cut appleToss the cubes in the lemon juice the moment they are cut, not after all the peeling is done. For the German apple cup the same job is done by rubbing the pared surface with a cut lemon, which is enough for a short wait but not for an hour.
- "Fine-grained apples"A dense, crisp, non-mealy variety that will hold a hollowed shell without collapsing. Braeburn, Honeycrisp or a firm Gala works; avoid McIntosh and older baking apples.
- Heart-stalks and heart-leavesThe pale inner celery ribs and the small inner lettuce leaves. Cutting celery fine "but do not chop" means clean knife slices, since bruised celery weeps and thins the mayonnaise.
- Mayonnaise lightened with creamFold in unsweetened whipped cream equal to half the volume of the mayonnaise, and do it just before filling. It slackens within the hour, so assemble the apple cups at the last minute.
- French endiveThis is witloof, sold now as Belgian endive, not curly frisée. Buy tight pale heads; green tips are bitter. Wipe the leaves dry rather than soaking them, as the recipe says, or the dressing will slide off.
- Cutting the citrus shellsA grapefruit spoon or a small serrated knife makes the Fleur-de-lis work. Cut the membrane free from the shell first, then lift core and membrane out in one piece, and drain the loose juice off before dressing or the oil will not cling.
Three of these salads carry an establishment name — the Boston Hotel, Murray's, and the Astoria itself — hotel and restaurant dishes copied down for the home cook, which is how a great deal of American salad-making spread in the 1900s. The Astoria shares its name with the Astoria, whose maître d'hôtel Oscar Tschirky is generally credited with the apple-and-celery salad bound in mayonnaise that appeared in his 1896 book, published when the house was still just the Waldorf; the walnuts now taken as essential to Waldorf salad were a later addition, and you can see that transition in the first recipe here, where they are offered as an option. Murray's, on West 42nd Street, was one of the enormous themed restaurants of the era, and a plate arranged to imitate a heraldic fleur-de-lis is very much of that moment, when a salad was expected to be built rather than tossed. Their appearance in a chapter on fats reflects the period's new enthusiasm for food chemistry: olive oil and egg yolk were being reckoned in calories, and a fruit salad was one of the pleasanter ways to get them onto a table set for two.