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Nasturtium Salad
1 tablespoon nasturtium seeds French dressing Nasturtium blossoms Wash the lettuce and place it in a bowl; scatter the seeds over the top; cover with French dressing and garnish with nasturtium blossoms.
A four-line salad that assumes you have a nasturtium vine by the kitchen door. The ingredient list omits the lettuce the method calls for, which is typical of loose-leaf cards written for cooks who already knew the dish.
- The missing ingredientThe original lists only the seeds, dressing and blossoms, but the method opens with washing lettuce. A head of leaf lettuce or butterhead will do; the recipe specifies neither type nor quantity.
- What "nasturtium seeds" meansThese are the plump green seed pods that form after the flowers drop, not dried seed for planting. They are sharp and mustardy raw; pickling them in vinegar was a common domestic treatment, and pickled pods should be drained before scattering. The recipe does not say which is meant.
- French dressing of the periodIn American books of this era French dressing is simply oil, vinegar, salt and pepper beaten together, with proportions varying from about two to four parts oil to one of vinegar depending on the book. It is not the sweet orange bottled dressing sold under that name now.
- Dress at the last momentDressed lettuce and nasturtium petals soften quickly, so assemble shortly before serving. Note that the method puts the blossoms on after the dressing, as a garnish.
- Picking the flowersUse blossoms that have just opened, shake them out rather than rinsing under a tap, and pull the green calyx off the back if it feels tough. The whole flower is edible, as are the round leaves.
- Restraint with the seedA tablespoon of green pods is genuinely hot, closer to horseradish than to capers. Halve it for a first attempt and taste before adding more.
- Source of the flowersOnly use nasturtiums you grew or bought as food. Ornamental bedding plants may have been treated with pesticides not intended for edible crops.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. As written it suits a first course or a side to cold meat.
Nasturtiums reached European gardens from South America in the sixteenth century and were treated as a kitchen plant before they were treated as a flower border: Gerard's herbal describes the peppery "Indian cresses," and the green pods were pickled as a domestic substitute for imported capers, a use that survives in the nickname "poor man's capers." The salad's presence in a loose-leaf American cook book of the early twentieth century sits with the era's fashion for flower garnishes and for cookery-school teaching. The card gives French dressing no proportions at all, as such books commonly assumed a base formula the cook already knew.