Summer Salad
1 cup diced cucumbers 1 cup cut celery 1 cup diced radishes 1 cup cream dressing 1 dozen medium-sized lettuce leaves 1/4 cup grated onion Select as firm, fresh vegetables as possible. If not strictly fresh, place in cold water for one-half hour or more. Peel the cucumbers and cut in one-half inch cubes. Wash and scrape the celery to free it of the coarse fiber. Cut quite finely. Wash and brush the radishes. Cut off the top and stem end and cut into cubes without peeling. The red radishes add a bit of color to the salad. Cleanse the lettuce by washing in several waters, and shred very finely with sharp shears. Prepare the grated onion and mix with the other vegetables. Blend all together with the dressing. Serve upon a lettuce leaf.
A straightforward chopped salad whose only real puzzle is the dressing, which the book assumes you already know how to make.
- Cream dressingNot whipped cream and not bottled mayonnaise. In books of this period the term usually covers a cooked (boiled) dressing thickened with egg and flour, sharpened with vinegar and thinned with cream, or mayonnaise let down with a few spoonfuls of cream; the book does not say which it means. A cup of thinned mayonnaise or a cup of sour cream slackened with cider vinegar and a little sugar and salt both land in the right place.
- A cup of dressing is generousThree cups of cut vegetable, plus the shredded lettuce and grated onion that are also blended in, to one cup of dressing gives a well-coated salad. Start with half and add the rest only if the mixture looks dry.
- Grated onionA quarter cup of onion grated on a box grater releases a great deal of juice and is much sharper than the same volume chopped. Two tablespoons is enough for most palates; use a mild yellow or sweet onion, not a red one, which will bleed.
- The lettuce is doing two jobsThe instruction to shred the leaves finely and then serve on a lettuce leaf means you need whole cups as well as shreds. Set aside four to six unbroken leaves before shredding the rest.
- CucumbersThe recipe peels them, as period recipes generally do; modern thin-skinned varieties need no peeling. If the cubes seem watery, salt them for fifteen minutes and drain, or the dressing will thin out on the plate.
- Reviving limp vegetablesThe half hour in cold water is sound and still works. Ice water is better; it firms celery and radishes noticeably in twenty minutes.
- Scraping the celeryOnly the outer ribs need the strings pulled. Inner ribs and the heart can be sliced as they come.
- YieldAbout four servings as a first course, or six small ones. Dress it at the last minute; the radishes and cucumber weep quickly.
Meatless cookbooks proliferated in the English-speaking world during and just after the First World War, when voluntary meatless days were promoted as a way of freeing up meat and fats for shipment abroad; the genre also drew on an older vegetarian and health-reform current running through the late nineteenth century.