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Cucumber and Radish Salad
Another pleasing combination for a spring salad. Prepare the cucumbers by allowing them to stand in cold water for one-half hour. Pare and dice, placing between cheese-cloth directly upon the ice. Prepare the radishes in like manner by simply washing and slicing before putting on ice; the same treatment is used for the lettuce. When ready to serve, mix with a French dressing.
Barely a recipe at all — it is a chilling technique with three vegetables attached. The whole point is temperature and dryness, so treat those as the instructions.
- The hinge: dry, cold, and dressed at the last momentCucumber and radish both weep once cut, and water on the vegetables thins the dressing and makes the lettuce limp. The cheesecloth is there to wick moisture away; a salad spinner and a bowl lined with paper towels do the same job in the refrigerator.
- "Directly upon the ice"In 1911 this meant setting the wrapped vegetables on or against the block in the icebox, the coldest spot in the cabinet. The bottom shelf of a refrigerator is the nearest equivalent. The recipe implies a short chill, not a long one; half an hour to an hour is plenty.
- The half-hour soakStanding whole cucumbers in cold water firms them and was also a way to freshen produce that had travelled. With supermarket cucumbers it is optional, though it does help older, slightly flabby ones.
- Cucumbers then and nowThe cucumbers Estes knew were thick-skinned, seedy field types, hence "pare." An English or Persian cucumber needs no peeling and no seeding. If you use a standard waxed slicer, peel it and scrape the seed core out with a spoon before dicing.
- French dressing, 1911 senseNot the sweet orange bottled dressing. It means a plain vinaigrette: oil and vinegar, commonly around three parts to one, with salt and pepper, whisked or shaken just before use.
- RadishesSlice thin — a mandoline or steady knife work at about 1/16 inch. Thick coins read as harsh rather than peppery against the mild cucumber.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no quantities. As a starting point, two medium cucumbers, a bunch of radishes and a head of lettuce will make roughly four side salads. Dress and toss immediately before serving; this salad does not hold.
Good Things to Eat (1911) was written by Rufus Estes, born enslaved in Tennessee in 1857, who cooked in Chicago restaurants, spent years in the Pullman Company's private-car service, and later ran the subsidiary kitchens of the U.S. Steel Corporation. His book is one of the earliest cookbooks published by an African American author, and the fingerprints of railroad and club cookery are all over it: dishes assembled quickly from a small larder, an obsession with ice, and a repeated instruction to hold components separately until the moment of service. That is exactly what this salad is — a chef's staging note. Cucumber and radish together belong to a broader turn-of-the-century enthusiasm for cold "spring" salads dressed with oil and vinegar, which American cooks generally called French dressing to distinguish it from boiled or mayonnaise-based dressings; the sweetened, tomato-tinted bottled version that later took the name is a much later development.