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Celery and Tomato Salad
1 pint diced fresh tomatoes 1/4 cup dressing 1/2 cup celery Peel the tomatoes and cut into three-fourth inch cubes, rejecting the seedy portion. Clean the celery and cut into half-inch lengths. Add to the tomatoes and mix with the cream dressing. Garnish and serve.
A plain 1910s-style composed salad whose success rests entirely on the tomatoes and on draining them well.
- Quantities in modern termsA pint of diced tomatoes is about 2 cups, roughly 3 medium tomatoes once peeled and seeded. With 1/2 cup celery and 1/4 cup dressing it serves three or four as a side.
- PeelingScore the skins, drop into boiling water for 20-30 seconds, then into cold water; the skins slip off. Peeling matters here because the salad is served cold and uncut skins curl away from the flesh.
- Rejecting the seedy portionThis is the hinge. The seed jelly is where the water is, and undrained tomato turns the dressing into pink soup within minutes. Scoop it out, then let the cubes sit in a colander for 10 minutes before dressing.
- "Cream dressing"In books of this period the term usually covers either a cooked or boiled dressing thickened with egg and flour and finished with cream, or a plain mixture of cream, vinegar, salt and a little sugar. It is not mayonnaise, though mayonnaise loosened with cream is the nearest ready substitute.
- Cut sizeThe recipe specifies three-quarter-inch tomato cubes and half-inch celery, so the celery pieces are the smaller of the two. Cutting both the same size reduces the difference in texture between them.
- GarnishThe recipe leaves the garnish unspecified. Lettuce as a cup or bed is a common option; celery leaves, watercress or a little chopped parsley all work.
- TimingDress at the last moment. Tomato held in dressing will weep, and the celery loses some of its crispness.
Celery carried some status: it was an expensive, labour-intensive crop, often blanched under boards or soil to whiten the stalks, and was set out in tall cut-glass vases on well-appointed tables well into the twentieth century. Pairing it with tomatoes — which are often said to have been regarded with suspicion by older cooks when served raw — and binding the two with a cream dressing rather than oil and vinegar is a combination found in American household cookery.