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Tions for Salads
Fruits and vegetables may be cut in cubes, balls, shredded, or fancy shapes.
They should be marinated with French French dressing with the addition of dressing and allowed to stand for half any of the following:
Horseradish Pimento Chives Beets, Finely Chopped Parsley Whipped Cream Fruit Juice in Place of Vinegar Raspberry, Vinegar, or Tarragon, used in Place of Cider Vinegar Roquefort Cheese Chili Sauce Hard-cooked Egg, Minced Green Pepper Celery, Finely Chopped Hazel Nuts Pecans English Walnuts Water Cress Pepper Grass an hour before placing on lettuce leaves or adding mayonnaise (if it is to be used). Containers for these may be made of orange or lemon rind, apples, peppers, tomatoes, peaches, pears, cabbage leaves, lettuce hearts, whole cabbage, beet shells, cucumbers, romaine leaves.
Vegetables Carrots, Peas Beets, Potato Beets, Peas Beets, Stuffed with Cabbage Tomatoes and Cucumbers (French dressing) Tomatoes and String Beans (French Dressing Tomatoes and Asparagus .
Artichoke Bottoms, Grapefruit and SARDINE SALAD Pimento (Macedone Salad) Turnips, Carrots, Potatoes, Peas and Beans Fruits Apple, Water Cress Peach Halves Filled with Mayonnaise and Nuts Peach Halves Stuck with Almonds covered with Mayonnaise Fresh Apricots, Almonds, or Pine Nuts Pineapple, White Cherries, Orange, Grapefruit Apple, Celery and Dates Apple, Celery, Nut Meats Bananas and Peanuts or Nuts Apples, Grapes and Walnuts Pineapple and Cream Cheese Pineapple, Tomatoes and Cream Cheese Grapefruit, Oranges, White Grapes Canned Cherries and Nuts Apples, Cream Cheese, Pimento
This page is a set of master instructions plus lists of combinations rather than a single dish, and the text has been mangled by column-scrambling in the original scan. Read it as: cut the fruit or vegetables, marinate them in French dressing (optionally flavoured with any of the listed additions) for half an hour, then serve on lettuce or dress with mayonnaise.
- The scrambled sentenceThe opening runs two printed columns together. The intended reading is "They should be marinated with French dressing, with the addition of any of the following... and allowed to stand for half an hour before placing on lettuce leaves or adding mayonnaise." Everything from Horseradish to Pepper Grass is a list of optional additions to the dressing, not ingredients of one salad.
- French dressing of the periodNot the sweet orange bottled product. In a book of this vintage it means oil and vinegar — recipes of the era run anywhere from about two to four parts oil to one of vinegar — with salt, pepper and sometimes a little paprika, whisked or shaken to a loose temporary emulsion and used immediately.
- Half an hour is for firm items onlyMarination suits carrots, beets, turnips, string beans, potatoes and celery. Peaches, pears, bananas and cherries will slump and weep in thirty minutes; dress them at the moment of serving. Bananas and apples also need acid on the cut surfaces at once or they brown.
- Pepper grassUsually garden cress (Lepidium sativum), sold today as cress or curly cress and often as a microgreen; the name was also applied to wild Lepidium species. Peppery, and a reasonable stand-in where the list calls for watercress.
- Macedone SaladA misprint for macédoine — the classic diced mixture of root vegetables, peas and beans cut to even small cubes. The evenness of the dice is the whole point of the dish.
- Beet shells and other containersWhole beets are boiled or roasted until tender, peeled, then hollowed with a melon baller or teaspoon. Tomatoes, peppers and citrus halves should be salted and drained upside down for a quarter hour so the filling does not sit in liquid.
- Whipped cream and fruit juice in the dressingBoth appear in fruit-salad recipes of the period. A spoonful of whipped cream folded into the dressing gives the pale, mild result these fruit combinations expect; lemon or orange juice replacing the vinegar softens it further.
- Raspberry and tarragon vinegarBoth are back in general sale and need no substitution, though modern raspberry vinegars are frequently sweetened. Taste before you build the dressing and cut the sugar elsewhere.
- Quantities and yieldThe original gives none. As a working figure, about a cup of prepared fruit or vegetable per person and roughly two tablespoons of dressing per cup of solids, added a little at a time.
Cookbooks of the early twentieth century carried pages like this one: not a recipe so much as a combinatorial table, letting an inexperienced hostess assemble something presentable from whatever the market had. It belongs to the great American salad enthusiasm of roughly 1900 to 1940, when commercially bottled mayonnaise and reliable canned fruit made composed salads cheap and quick, and when the salad course was judged largely on appearance.