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Celery and Fruit Salad
2 stalks celery. 1/2 lb. walnuts. 3 oranges. 1 lb. Malaga grapes. Cut celery in half inch pieces, oranges in halves and scoop out meat. Seed grapes, mix lightly with either cooked dressing or mayonnaise. Serve in orange cups in wreaths of smilax.
A 1920 fruit-and-nut salad built on the Waldorf template, served in scooped orange shells. Two points of translation matter more than anything else: what "2 stalks celery" meant then, and the fact that the smilax is a garnish, not food.
- "Stalks" means heads"Stalks" probably means heads -- In period usage a stalk of celery often meant the whole bunch rather than a single rib, though the word was used both ways. Two whole heads would swamp the fruit here; one head, trimmed of its coarse outer ribs and diced, is the sensible reading for a bowl of three oranges' worth of fruit.
- Malaga grapesLarge, firm, seeded green table grapes, once the standard winter grape in American markets and now uncommon. Red Globe or a muscat variety gives the same size and crunch; if you use seedless grapes, halve them so they hold dressing.
- Half a pound of walnutsRead this as shelled walnut meats, which is roughly 2 cups; that is generous against three oranges, and 1 cup broken into large pieces is closer to modern balance. Toasting them briefly sharpens the flavor against the sweet fruit.
- Orange cupsHalve the oranges across the equator, run a grapefruit knife around the inside of each half, and lift the flesh out in segments. Trim a thin slice from the base of each shell so it sits level. Three oranges give six cups.
- Cooked dressingThe usual period alternative to mayonnaise was a boiled dressing thickened with egg and flour or cornstarch and sharpened with vinegar. It is tangier and less rich than mayonnaise; a thinned mayonnaise with lemon juice folded in approximates it.
- Smilax is decoration onlySmilax was a florist's trailing green sold for table work, wreathed around dishes and candlesticks. It is not eaten and is not necessary; if you want a green frame, use watercress or small lettuce leaves, which are edible.
- Assemble lateCut celery weeps and orange segments collapse once dressed. Combine everything within half an hour of serving and dress with a light hand, folding rather than stirring, or the fruit breaks down into the dressing.
- YieldSix filled orange halves, enough for six as a salad course alongside a main dish.
Mary A. Wilson's New Cook Book came out of her years writing for the Ladies' Home Journal in Philadelphia, and its salad chapter reflects the American fashion, running roughly from the 1890s through the 1920s, for sweet fruit-and-nut salads bound with mayonnaise or boiled dressing. The celery-and-apple combination popularized as Waldorf salad is generally traced to New York's Waldorf hotel in the 1890s, with walnuts a later addition to the formula; within a decade cookbooks were substituting freely into it, and oranges and grapes were the obvious winter answer where apples were the autumn one. The serving directions say as much about the period as the ingredients do: hollowed fruit shells as containers, and a wreath of smilax trailing around the plate, belonged to an era when the salad course was expected to be a piece of table decoration first and a dish second.