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Tomato Salad
Scald and remove the skins and set the tomatoes where they will become perfectly cold. Just before serving time divide them in halves, cutting them across their widest parts; drain out the juice, and place one piece with its cut side upwards on each serving plate with one or two leaves of white, crisp lettuce underneath. Pour over each portion a tablespoon of French dressing, which should be made of three times as much oil as vinegar.
A cold-tomato salad from the era when a tomato was always peeled before it reached the table. Nothing here is difficult; the only things worth adjusting are the peeling method and the dressing ratio.
- Scalding and peelingScore a shallow X in the blossom end, drop into boiling water for 15-30 seconds, then straight into ice water. The skins slip off. Longer than about half a minute and the outer flesh starts to cook and go soft.
- Chill properly"Perfectly cold" means at least an hour in the refrigerator, which the book's readers achieved in an icebox or cellar. Peeled tomatoes weep, so set them on a rack or plate rather than letting them sit in their own liquid.
- French dressing, 1900 senseNot the sweet orange bottled dressing sold under that name today. It is a plain vinaigrette: three parts oil to one part vinegar, with salt and pepper, whisked or shaken to combine. That is the same as the usual modern ratio; with no mustard or other emulsifier it will separate quickly, so dress at the last moment.
- Draining the juiceCutting across the widest part exposes the seed chambers; tipping out the liquid keeps the dressing from being diluted into a puddle on the plate. Scooping out the seeds entirely is a reasonable extra step and closer to how the dish is served now.
- Choose the tomatoA firm, meaty tomato holds its shape as a cut half; a very ripe heirloom will collapse. Beefsteak types suit the dish as written.
- YieldOne half tomato per person as written, which makes this a small side salad. Two halves per plate is a more usual portion today.
The manual appears to come from the Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns, which issued household manuals aimed at the same middle-class readership, and its salad chapter reflects a moment when raw vegetables were still gaining ground at the American table. Tomatoes had shed the last of their old reputation as suspect nightshades by the late nineteenth century, but the habit of scalding and skinning them persisted; the reasons usually offered — a general wariness of uncooked food — are more surmise than documented fact. "French dressing" in this period simply meant oil and vinegar in the French manner, distinguished from the boiled or cooked dressings and the mayonnaise that dominated American salads; the sweetened, tomato-tinted bottled version that later claimed the name is a twentieth-century commercial development. The insistence on crisp lettuce beneath and a cold tomato above is characteristic of the era's salad writing, where temperature and presentation carried as much weight as flavour.