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Tomato Salad, Horseradish Dressing
Plunge the tomatoes, placed in a wire basket, into a kettle of hot water; remove at once and rub off the skin; chill thoroughly and cut in halves.
Serve on lettuce leaves with a star of cream dressing, seasoned with grated horseradish, on the top of each slice.
A composed salad rather than a tossed one, and the whole thing hinges on the tomatoes being cold and firm when they reach the plate. Two details in the original assume knowledge a modern reader may not have: what "cream dressing" meant in this book, and what a "star" is.
- The hot-water dipThe original says hot water and to "remove at once"; a brief dip is enough to loosen the skin on a ripe tomato, and the instant removal is the operative part. Cut a shallow X in the blossom end first and the skin peels back more easily. Chill promptly afterward, or the flesh cooks and slumps.
- Chill thoroughlyPeeled tomatoes weep. Halve them after chilling, as written, and let the cut halves drain a few minutes on a rack or paper towel so the dressing does not slide off into a pink puddle.
- "Cream dressing"In cookbooks of this period the term usually means a cooked or boiled dressing thickened with egg and finished with cream, or a cream dressing sharpened with vinegar and sugar — not whipped cream and not modern bottled mayonnaise. Any thick, spoonable dressing that holds a shape will do; it must be stiff enough to sit on top of the tomato.
- HorseradishFreshly grated root is what is meant, and it is much sharper and more volatile than the jarred kind. Grate it at the last minute; its pungency fades fairly quickly once the root is cut. If you use prepared horseradish, drain it well or the dressing loosens.
- A star of dressing"A star" most likely means the dressing was piped into a small rosette, through a star tip on a bag or paper cone. A teaspoon dropped neatly is the plain-cook version, but the dressing has to be thick enough to stand.
- Halves, not slicesThe instructions say halves, then refer to each "slice." Either works; halves cut side up hold the dressing better, slices make a flatter, more formal plate.
- YieldOne medium tomato per person as a first course or luncheon salad; allow a scant tablespoon of dressing for each half.
This book was compiled around the turn of the twentieth century, by which time the tomato was well established as the summer salad vegetable in American households — raw, peeled and iced, which was itself a mark of refinement, since peeling and chilling took ice and labor. The fussiness here seems characteristic of the period's cookery-school style: the wire basket, the instant dip, the piped star, applied to a plate of tomatoes on lettuce. Horseradish in a cream dressing is an older and more northern idea, generally traced to the German and English habit of serving grated root with cold beef; folding it into a cooked cream dressing appears to have been one way of giving a bland salad some bite before commercial bottled dressings existed.