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Waldorf Salad
1 cup apples cut into small dice 1 cup celery cut into small dice 1/4 cup mayonnaise 1/4 cup heavy cream Chopped walnuts or pecans Whip the cream, and mix the mayonnaise with it. As the apples are diced, put them into the dressing to prevent them from turning dark. Add the diced celery and lightly mix together. Serve on lettuce with the chopped nuts sprinkled over the top. A very little grated orange rind may be mixed with this salad if the flavor is liked.
A simple bound salad where the only technique that matters is the order of operations. The recipe expects you to have mayonnaise already made.
- Dice into the dressingThe instruction to drop the apple pieces into the dressing as you cut them is the hinge of the recipe. Coated apple does not brown, so there is no need for lemon juice or acidulated water, and no watery pool at the bottom of the bowl later.
- Heavy creamUse cream at 36 percent fat or higher and whip it only to soft peaks. Whipped stiff, it stiffens further once the mayonnaise is folded in and the salad turns pasty rather than light.
- MayonnaiseThe recipe assumes mayonnaise is already made, most likely homemade, which tends to be thinner and sharper than jarred. Some commercial mayonnaises are sweeter and stiffer; a teaspoon of lemon juice or cider vinegar will bring the dressing back into balance if needed.
- Apple choiceNo variety is specified. A firm, tart apple such as Granny Smith, Braeburn or Honeycrisp holds its dice; softer eating apples collapse into the cream.
- CeleryUse the inner ribs and cut them the same size as the apple. Outer stalks are stringy and will not dice cleanly at this scale.
- NutsSprinkle the walnuts or pecans at the moment of serving, as the recipe directs. Folded in early they soften, and walnut skins can discolour a pale dressing. Toasting them briefly and cooling them first improves the flavour.
- Orange rindGrate it fine and use no more than about a quarter teaspoon for this quantity. The oil is potent and easily dominates both apple and celery.
- Yield and timingTwo cups of diced fruit and vegetable with dressing serves three or four as a side salad. Assemble within an hour of serving; it does not hold overnight.
The salad is generally traced to the Waldorf Hotel in New York in the mid-1890s and to Oscar Tschirky, the hotel's maître d'hôtel, whose own published version was nothing more than apple, celery and mayonnaise. The nuts that almost everyone now considers essential were a later addition, appearing in printed recipes over the following decades, and the whipped cream folded into the mayonnaise here is one of many refinements that accumulated as the dish spread from hotel dining rooms into home cookbooks.