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Dressed Watercress
Wash, remove roots, drain, and chill watercress. Arrange in salad dish, and serve with French Dressing.
Barely more than a note, but the two things it assumes — a house dressing on hand and cress sold in rooted bunches — no longer hold.
- French Dressing, as the book means itFarmer's version runs roughly 4 tablespoons olive oil to 2 tablespoons vinegar, with 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. That 2:1 is sharper than the 3:1 ratio common in modern dressings; add oil to taste.
- Removing rootsCress was sold in bunches pulled with the crowns and often a little bed gravel attached. Supermarket cress is trimmed already; with bunched or farmers-market cress, cut away the pale stem bases and any yellowed leaves, since the thick lower stems are stringy.
- Washing means several changes of waterCress grows in flowing water and holds grit in the leaf axils. Swish in a deep bowl, lift the cress out rather than pouring off, and repeat until no sand settles.
- Wild-gathered cressCress taken from streams running through grazing land can carry liver fluke and whatever else is upstream. Washing does not make it safe. Use cultivated cress.
- The chilling is the techniqueDrain thoroughly, then hold the cress dry and cold — wrapped in a towel in the refrigerator for half an hour — so the leaves stay rigid. Cress wilts faster than lettuce and goes limp within minutes of dressing.
- Dress at the tableBecause it collapses so quickly, arrange the cress undressed and pour the dressing over just before serving, or pass the dressing separately.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity; two generous bunches, trimmed, will serve about four as a side salad.
Watercress (Nasturtium officinale) was one of the cheapest green things in a nineteenth-century city, grown commercially in spring-fed beds and hawked in the streets by the bunch — Henry Mayhew's London survey gives whole pages to cress sellers, who were out before dawn to catch the breakfast trade. In American cookbooks of Fannie Farmer's generation it turns up in three roles: as a garnish for roast game and grilled meats, as a peppery filling for tea sandwiches, and here, on its own, dressed only with oil and vinegar. The brevity of the entry is the point. The Boston Cooking-School book teaches a small stock of foundation preparations — French Dressing among them — and then assumes the reader will apply them, so an entire salad can be written in one sentence.