Home › Salads › Frozen Cheese Salad
Frozen Cheese Salad
2 lbs. cottage cheese. 4 large tomatoes. 1/2 teaspoon salt. 1/4 teaspoon cayenne. 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce. 1 cup cream. 1 green pepper. Cut tomatoes in pieces, drain, cut peppers. Mix cheese with cream and seasoning. Add tomatoes and pepper. Pack in mould; turn out and slice.
A moulded cheese salad from the era when "frozen" on a salad page usually meant packed in a mould and buried in ice and salt rather than frozen hard. The whole dish stands or falls on how thoroughly the tomatoes are drained.
- What "frozen" meant herePeriod "frozen" salads of this type were generally packed in a mould and bedded in cracked ice and salt, chilled to a firmness that would slice rather than frozen hard; the recipe itself specifies neither method nor timing. In a modern freezer, check it well before it sets solid and move it to the refrigerator once it slices cleanly.
- Drain the tomatoes hardFour large tomatoes cut up and merely tipped into a colander will still shed a great deal of juice into the cheese, and that water is what turns the sliced mould into ice crystals. Seed them, salt the pieces lightly, and let them sit fifteen minutes before draining.
- Cottage cheese textureCottage cheese of this period was often homemade and tended to be drier and finer-curded than many tubs sold now. Press it through a sieve or give it a short pulse in a food processor; small-curd or dry-curd styles suit this better than a wet creamed one.
- The creamThe recipe says only "cream" and does not specify a grade. Heavy cream will hold the mixture together best through chilling; a lighter cream or half-and-half is more likely to weep.
- CayenneA quarter teaspoon of cayenne against two pounds of bland cheese reads mild on paper but is noticeable when cold, since chilling flattens everything else. Start with half that if you are unsure, and taste after the cream is in.
- The mouldAny straight-sided loaf tin or mould of about two quarts will hold this quantity. Line it with plastic wrap so it turns out without a warm-water dip, which softens the outer edge you are about to slice.
- Yield and servingThe full quantity fills a large mould and will give a dozen or more slices, enough for a lunch or supper course. Slices of moulded salad were commonly laid on a lettuce leaf with mayonnaise or French dressing alongside.
Mrs. Wilson's book belongs to the moment when American home kitchens had reliable ice but not yet reliable mechanical refrigeration, and the salad chapter reflects it: moulded, chilled and "frozen" salads appear alongside plain green ones because a hostess with an ice tub could produce something that looked engineered. Cottage cheese was cheap, plentiful and heavily promoted during and just after the First World War as a domestic protein that spared meat, which is one reason it shows up in two-pound quantities here rather than as a garnish. The Worcestershire and cayenne are typical of the period's approach to bland dairy — sharp bottled seasoning standing in for the acidity a modern cook might get from lemon or vinegar. Mary A. Wilson wrote for the Philadelphia press and her recipes carry that newspaper-column terseness: quantities, then a single run of imperative verbs, with the assumption that the reader already owns the mould.