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Pear Salad
6 pears
½ cup broken walnut-meats
6 stalks celery and stoned olives, chopped
Mayonnaise
Lettuce leaves
Salt and pepper
Select well-formed pears and cut off a bit of the broad end so that the pear will stand steadily on the plate. With a potato-ball cutter remove the center, leaving enough of the pear to make a thick cup. Cut the celery into dice, add broken walnut-meats and chopped olives and mix all together with mayonnaise, adding a pinch of salt and pepper. Fill the pear cups and serve on lettuce leaves.
A stuffed-fruit salad of the kind that filled American luncheon menus in the 1910s. The construction matters more than the cooking, since nothing is cooked at all.
- The hinge: pears that stand upChoose firm, slightly underripe Bosc or Anjou — a ripe Bartlett will collapse under the filling and weep juice onto the lettuce. Trim the blossom end flat, then hollow from the stem end so the fruit sits like a cup.
- Potato-ball cutterThis is what we now call a melon baller. A teaspoon measure works nearly as well for scooping out the core and seeds.
- BrowningThe original ignores it. Brush the cut surfaces with lemon juice if there will be any delay before serving.
- Six stalks of celeryIn cookbooks of this period a "stalk" generally meant one rib rather than the whole head. Six ribs diced gives roughly a cup and a half, which is about right for six pears.
- Stoned olivesStoned means pitted. Green olives in brine are the likeliest intent; use them sparingly, as modern brines can be saltier and will overwhelm the fruit.
- MayonnaiseBought mayonnaise is fine here and stiffer than most homemade, which helps the filling hold its shape. If you make your own, note that it contains raw egg and should be kept cold and eaten the same day.
- Salt and pepperSeason the filling, not the pear. With olives already in the mix, taste before adding any salt at all.
- Yield and servingSix salads, one pear each, intended as a luncheon course rather than a side. Chill the assembled plates no more than half an hour before serving.
Butterick, better known for dress patterns, published its household books for the same audience of middle-class women who bought its tissue-paper sleeves, and this salad belongs squarely to the era's fashion for fruit served as a savory course. The combination of apple or pear, celery and mayonnaise is generally traced to the Waldorf salad of the 1890s New York hotel dining room, which spread quickly through American cookbooks and was endlessly varied, with versions adding walnuts.