Home › Salads › Apple and Cheese Salad
Apple and Cheese Salad
6 apples. 1/4 lb. nuts. 1 lb. cheese. 2 lemons. 1 cup dressing. Marinate apples, cut in cubes in lemon juice. Cut cheese in cubes also. When ready to serve, mix lightly together and add mayonnaise. Put pecan on top, serve on lettuce leaf.
A straightforward composed salad from the Wilson book's cold-dish chapter, though the proportions are generous by current standards and the cheese is left unspecified.
- The cheese is the open questionThe recipe does not say which kind. A firm, mild-to-medium cheddar is a reasonable match; anything sharp or crumbly will dominate the apples.
- A pound is a lotA pound of cheese against six apples is a high proportion, which reads as a luncheon main course rather than a side salad. Half that quantity gives a better balance if the salad accompanies something else.
- Lemon juice does the real workThe marinade is there to keep the cut apples from browning, not to flavor them. Toss the cubes in the juice of both lemons the moment they are cut, and drain before dressing so the mayonnaise does not thin and slide off.
- Apple choiceA firm, tart apple holds cubes without turning to mush. Peeling is optional and the recipe does not require it; skin on gives color against the white cheese.
- "1 cup dressing" and "add mayonnaise"These appear to be the same thing: a cup of thick mayonnaise-style dressing is what is called for. Add it at the last minute, as instructed, or the apples weep.
- The nutsA quarter pound is roughly a cup of pecan halves. The recipe's only direction for them is "Put pecan on top", though whether the whole quarter pound is meant as garnish or partly mixed in is left unclear.
- Yield and servingThe recipe states no yield; the quantities would stretch to eight or so portions, each on a lettuce leaf. The direction is to mix only when ready to serve.
Apple-and-cheese pairings on the salad plate belong to a broadly identifiable American moment: the decades either side of 1920, when mayonnaise-bound fruit salads served on a lettuce leaf were a common light luncheon dish. Mrs. Wilson wrote household columns for the Philadelphia press and lectured on food conservation during the First World War, a period in which cheese was promoted as an economical protein in place of meat -- though whether that accounts for the pound of it here is speculation. The combination of apple, nut, and mayonnaise recalls the Waldorf salad, generally traced to the Waldorf Hotel in New York in the 1890s, although nuts were not part of the original version and were added to the template later.