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Neufchatel Salad
Mash two rolls of Neufchatel cheese, add two tablespoons of finely chopped olives, moisten with cream, season with salt and cayenne, form into small balls.
Marinate with a French dressing. Serve on shredded lettuce and garnish with four red peppers cut in strips, and arranged in four piles in star shape.
A luncheon salad of the American ladies'-club era, built on soft cheese rather than greens. Two details need translating: what a "roll" of Neufchatel was, and what "French dressing" meant in 1900.
- Rolls of NeufchatelAmerican Neufchatel was sold in small foil-wrapped rolls, commonly around 3 ounces, so two rolls is likely about 6 ounces. Modern supermarket Neufchatel comes in 8-ounce bricks; use three-quarters of one.
- Not the French cheeseThis is not the bloomy-rind Neufchatel of Normandy. American Neufchatel is a fresh cream cheese made with slightly less butterfat, and it behaves exactly like cream cheese here.
- French dressingIn this period the term means a plain vinaigrette: about three parts oil to one part vinegar, salt, pepper, whisked or shaken. It does not mean the sweet orange bottled dressing of later decades.
- Red peppersProbably canned pimientos, a common tinned sweet red pepper of the day, though fresh sweet red peppers are also possible; chiles are not meant. Roasted red peppers from a jar, blotted dry, give the same soft strips.
- Chill before marinatingSoftened cheese balls will slump the moment dressing touches them. Roll them, refrigerate at least an hour until firm, then spoon the dressing over just before serving rather than letting them sit in it.
- CayenneA pinch, no more. It is there for warmth against the bland cheese, not for heat.
- OlivesProbably green olives in brine, though ripe olives are also possible. Chop fine and drain well, or the cheese will be too wet to shape even before the cream goes in.
- YieldEnough for about four small salad-course portions.
Cream cheese salads like this one belong to the age of the ladies' luncheon, when the salad course was expected to arrive looking composed rather than tossed, and cookbooks specified garnishes by geometry: star shapes, wheels, borders of shredded lettuce. American Neufchatel is generally traced to Chester, New York, in the early 1870s, where dairymen adapting a French name produced a fresh, mild cheese sold in small foil rolls. Its appearance in a salad recipe at all says a good deal about how flexible the category was: almost anything cool, seasoned and arranged with care could be called a salad, and soft cheese held a shape better than most things on the table.