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Marquise Salad
3 firm tomatoes 1/2 cup cut onion 1/2 cup chopped parsley 2 tablespoons olive oil Pare tomatoes and cut in half. Mix finely cut onion and parsley, add olive oil; let stand two hours before using. When ready to serve line salad bowl with lettuce, place tomatoes in it and on each half put 1 tablespoon onion and parsley mixture. Pour on French dressing. Everything should be ice cold.
A cold composed salad with almost no technique to it; the two-hour maceration of onion and parsley in oil is the whole point of the dish.
- The hinge: the two-hour restThe oil is there to draw the sharpness out of the raw onion and carry the parsley's flavour. Cutting corners here leaves you with harsh onion sitting on a tomato. Two hours at cool room temperature is enough; refrigerate it if the kitchen is warm.
- "Cut onion" means very finelyHalf a cup of raw onion divided over six tomato halves is a lot, so mince it fine rather than dicing. A mild white or Spanish onion, or a shallot, suits the dish better than a strong yellow one.
- Pare the tomatoesParing means peeling. Score the skins, drop them in boiling water for 15-20 seconds and slip the skins off, then chill thoroughly before halving.
- French dressing, 1920s senseFrench dressing, period sense -- In American books of this era French dressing is plain oil and vinegar with salt and pepper, roughly three parts oil to one of vinegar, whisked to a temporary emulsion. It is not the sweetened orange bottled dressing sold under that name now.
- Season itNo salt is listed anywhere in the recipe. Salt the cut tomato halves lightly before topping them, and season the onion mixture as well.
- YieldSix halves, so three to six servings depending on whether it is a first course or a side. It does not hold once dressed, so assemble at the table.
- Ice coldThe instruction is worth taking literally for the bowl and the dressing, but tomatoes are generally held to lose flavour when chilled much below about 55F. Chill them an hour rather than overnight.
Dishes labelled marquise in early twentieth-century American cookbooks rarely have any traceable connection to a particular marchioness; the word was applied, like princesse and royale, to signal a French-restaurant elegance that sold well to home cooks. Its appearance here reflects how firmly the dressed tomato salad had settled into the American repertoire: a peeled, chilled, dressed tomato had become standard company fare. The brevity of the recipe suits that: it was written for readers who already knew what French dressing was and needed only the arrangement.