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Turquoise Salad
Mix together equal parts of celery and tart apple cut in match-like pieces, and one or two pimentos cut in similar pieces. Dress with mayonnaise made light with whipped cream. Serve in nests of lettuce.
A simple julienne salad from the era when a salad was judged on the neatness of its knife work. Almost everything here depends on cutting evenly and dressing at the last moment.
- "Match-like pieces"This means julienne: strips about 1/8 inch square and 1 1/2 to 2 inches long, the size of a wooden match. Uniformity is the whole point of the dish, since there is nothing else going on in it.
- Keep the apple from browningCut the apple last and toss it immediately in lemon juice, or fold it straight into the mayonnaise. A tart firm variety holds its shape best; Granny Smith, Braeburn or a good russet-type apple works where a mealy eating apple collapses.
- PimentosThese are canned or jarred sweet red pimiento peppers, sold whole or in strips, not fresh red bell pepper and not pimentón. Drain and blot them dry or the liquid will thin the dressing and bleed pink into the apple.
- Mayonnaise "made light with whipped cream"Whip heavy cream to soft peaks, unsweetened, and fold it into the mayonnaise, roughly one part cream to two parts mayonnaise. Fold rather than stir, and do it shortly before serving; the mixture slackens as it sits.
- Season itThe original assumes a well-seasoned homemade mayonnaise. With commercial mayonnaise the cream mutes it badly, so add salt and a squeeze of lemon after folding and taste before it goes on the salad.
- Raw eggIf you make the mayonnaise from scratch it contains uncooked egg, which is nothing unusual but worth knowing. Use pasteurized eggs if serving anyone who should avoid raw egg.
- Nests of lettuceCup-shaped inner leaves of butterhead, Boston or the heart of an iceberg hold their shape as a cup; loose-leaf varieties will not. Chill the leaves crisp and dry them thoroughly so the dressing clings.
- YieldTwo cups each of celery and apple plus two pimentos dresses about four salads. Assemble immediately before it reaches the table, as the celery weeps and the leaves wilt quickly once dressed.
The name is decorative rather than descriptive, a habit of turn-of-the-century American salad books, which borrowed the vocabulary of jewels and flowers for what were often very plain mixtures of apple, celery and canned pepper. Janet McKenzie Hill's Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing Dish Dainties belongs to the moment when the salad course moved from a bowl of dressed greens to a composed, molded or nested arrangement meant to look ornamental on the plate; the lettuce "nest" is the standard presentation of the period. Canned pimientos are the modern touch here: imported Spanish pimiento peppers were reaching American groceries by around the turn of the century, and with the pimiento canning industry that grew up in Georgia in the following decades they became a standard source of bright red color in salads, cheese spreads and sandwich fillings for much of the next half century. The whipped-cream-lightened mayonnaise reflects the same taste for softness and pallor as Waldorf salad, to which this recipe is a close relation -- the Waldorf in its earliest form was likewise just apple, celery and mayonnaise, the nuts being a later addition.