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Watercress and Apple Salad
1 bunch watercress 1 cupful sliced tart apples 2 tablespoonfuls cider vine- Salt and pepper to taste gar 6 tablespoonfuls olive oil 1 teaspoonful sugar Wash and dry the cress, having it perfectly fresh and crisp, and arrange it lightly in a dainty earthenware dish. Put the apples on the top of the cress. Make a dressing of the vinegar, oil, salt, pepper, and sugar. Pour over the watercress and apples, serve immediately.
A three-minute salad whose only real technique is dressing it at the last moment. The proportions are sound; the ingredient list is simply set in two columns and reads out of order.
- The ingredients, sorted out1 bunch watercress, 1 cupful sliced tart apples, 2 tablespoons cider vinegar, 6 tablespoons olive oil, 1 teaspoon sugar, salt and pepper. That is a 3:1 oil-to-vinegar dressing, on the rich side but correct for the peppery cress.
- Dress at the tableWatercress collapses within a few minutes of meeting vinegar and oil. Whisk the dressing ahead, keep it separate, and pour only as the dish goes out — the instruction to serve immediately is the hinge of the recipe.
- ApplesTart means something firm and acidic: Granny Smith, or Bramley if you can get it. Slice thin and toss the slices in a little of the vinegar before assembling to keep them from browning.
- Washing the cressWatercress grown in open water needs a thorough wash in several changes of cold water. Dry it properly in a salad spinner or a towel; wet leaves dilute the dressing and it slides off.
- The dishAn "earthenware dish" here is just a shallow serving bowl; nothing in this recipe is cooked. A wide bowl keeps the cress from packing down.
- YieldOne bunch of cress and a cup of apple will probably stretch to two or three as a side salad, two if it is the whole course.
Watercress was among the cheapest green things in Anglo-American markets around 1900 — grown in beds fed by running water, and sold in bunches by street hawkers in London and New York. Pairing it with raw apple and a sharp oil-and-vinegar dressing belongs to the fashion for cold salads that spread through American household cookery in the 1890s and 1900s, when French dressing (oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, sometimes a pinch of sugar) was a fixture of printed household cookery.