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Chicory Salad
Pare off the green leaves from two heads of white endive and cut away the roots; wash thoroughly, drain well on a napkin, place them in a salad-bowl, season with salt and pepper diluted with two tablespoonfuls of vinegar and add a tablespoonful and a half of sweet oil. Mix thoroughly together, and serve.
A three-line vinaigrette on blanched chicory, written when the salad course at the Waldorf was expected to be sharp rather than creamy. The only real decisions are which vegetable to buy and how much vinegar you can stand.
- What to buy"White endive" here is Belgian endive, also sold as witloof chicory or Belgian chicory — the pale, tight, torpedo-shaped heads grown in the dark. Curly endive (frisée) and escarole are different plants and will not behave the same way.
- Paring the green leavesAny leaf tips that have seen light turn green and bitter. Strip those and shave a thin cone off the solid root end, which is the bitterest part of all.
- Sweet oilPeriod shorthand for olive oil; the name is usually explained as marking edible oil off from lamp and machine oils, though that reading is tradition rather than documented fact. A mild, non-peppery oil suits this better than a green, assertive one.
- The dressing ratioTwo tablespoons vinegar to one and a half of oil is more acid than oil — the reverse of the modern three-to-one. Bracing with the bitterness of endive, but if it reads as harsh, cut the vinegar to a teaspoon or two and hold the oil where it is.
- Dissolving the seasoningSalt and pepper go into the vinegar first, not onto the leaves. Salt will not dissolve in oil, and undissolved grains land unevenly.
- Drying mattersDraining on a napkin is not fussiness; water clinging to the leaves both dilutes the dressing and stops it adhering. A salad spinner does the same work faster.
- TimingDress at the table or immediately before serving. Endive holds up better than lettuce but will still soften and weep quickly in this much acid.
- YieldTwo heads dressed this way serve two as a salad course, or four alongside a rich main dish.
The name of Belgian endive has been confused ever since it reached American tables — the plant is a chicory, forced in darkness so the head stays pale and tender, and in French it is *endive* while what Americans call endive is *chicorée*. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel and the compiler of this 1896 book, filed the dish under chicory and then called the vegetable endive in the instructions, preserving that muddle intact. The recipe also shows how plain a hotel salad could be at the end of the nineteenth century: leaves, oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, mixed in the bowl and sent out. The more elaborate American salads of fruit and gelatine were largely still ahead, though the same volume is already full of mayonnaise-dressed salads, and the Waldorf's own contribution — apples, celery and mayonnaise — appears elsewhere in it.