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Mayonnaise Tomato Salad
6 small solid tomatoes, 1/2 cup of Mayonnaise, Crisp part of one head of lettuce.
Peel the tomatoes without scalding and stand in a cold place till very, very cold. Make the Mayonnaise and stand away until wanted. When ready to serve cut the tomatoes
A composed salad rather than a tossed one: the whole point is temperature contrast and firm, unwatery tomatoes. Everything else is assembly.
- Peeling without scaldingRubbing the skin all over with the back of a knife blade loosens it enough to pull away in strips, which keeps the flesh firm instead of softening it in hot water. It only works on ripe fruit; a serrated peeler is the modern equivalent.
- "Very, very cold"In practice a couple of hours in the coldest part of the refrigerator will do; the recipe specifies only a cold place. Cold tomatoes stay solid under dressing; room-temperature ones weep and thin the mayonnaise.
- Half a cup of mayonnaiseEnough for six tomatoes with a spoonful on each. Period mayonnaise was made by hand with raw yolk, oil and vinegar or lemon; if you make your own and are serving anyone pregnant, elderly or immune-compromised, use pasteurized eggs.
- The lettuce"crisp part of one head" means the firm inner leaves; a crisphead or romaine heart serves. The recipe does not say how they were arranged, but leaves used whole as a bed or cup under each tomato suit a composed salad of this kind.
- How the tomatoes were cutThe instruction breaks off mid-sentence. A common treatment was to cut each chilled tomato down into four or six sections without severing the base, so it opened out, with the dressing spooned into the centre.
- SaltingNo salt is specified. Salt the cut tomatoes lightly just before dressing them rather than in advance, or they will release juice onto the plate.
- YieldSix servings, one tomato each, as a first course or a side with cold meat.
Tomato salad under mayonnaise seems to have been a fixture of American summer tables in the later nineteenth century, by which time the tomato was an ordinary market vegetable i the story of its long reputation as suspect is largely a received narrative, and it was common produce well before then. Books of this sort appear to have treated mayonnaise as a basic skill rather than a bought product: it was whisked or beaten by hand with oil added drop by drop, and a cook's reputation could rest on whether hers held. The instruction to peel without scalding, and to chill both components separately before they ever meet, probably reflects a kitchen without reliable refrigeration, where coldness was a scarce quality to be conserved deliberately rather than assumed.