Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Cress Salad
Cress Salad
Mix together equal proportions of white wine, vinegar and salad oil, season with a small quantity of moist sugar and a little salt, and turn it into a salad-bowl. Throw in some sprigs of watercress, and on these strew lightly the leaves of young nasturtiums, with sufficient garden-cress to fill the bowl. Toss this well, and then turn it out onto a large dish. Arrange a wreath of nasturtium leaves around the edge of the dish, allowing them to overlap each other, then put an inner circle of the flowers, and in that a circle of sliced hard-boiled eggs. Serve before the freshness of the salad has disappeared.
A composed salad of three peppery greens, dressed before the leaves go in rather than after. Two things need attention: the dressing is far sharper than modern taste expects, and the whole thing collapses if it sits.
- The dressing ratioEqual parts white wine, vinegar and oil leaves only one part oil to two parts of other liquid, and although wine is far less acidic than vinegar the result is much sharper than a modern vinaigrette. If you want it recognisably balanced, hold the wine and vinegar at one part each against three of oil, or expect a very aggressive salad.
- Moist sugarSoft light brown sugar. Nineteenth-century sugar was sold as loaf, crushed, or moist, the last being partly refined and slightly damp. The recipe specifies only "a small quantity".
- Two different cressesWatercress is the aquatic plant sold in bunches; garden cress is the small peppery seedling grown in soil, sold in seed-tray form as cress in cress-and-mustard punnets (land cress, Barbarea verna, is a different plant). Substituting more watercress for the garden cress works, but the salad loses the finer texture that made up its bulk.
- NasturtiumsBoth leaves and flowers of Tropaeolum majus are edible and hot-peppery. Use flowers from plants you know have not been sprayed; florists' and garden-centre stock is often treated with systemic insecticide. Pick young leaves, no larger than a coin, or they turn coarse.
- Dressing in the bowlThe dressing is made in the salad bowl and the leaves thrown in on top, so tossing from the bottom coats the greens with a minimum of handling, which is worth doing gently with watercress, whose bruised stems soften quickly.
- Serve immediately"Before the freshness of the salad has disappeared" is the hinge: acid wilts cress quickly, so dress at the last moment. Note that the original tosses and turns out the salad first and arranges the wreath of leaves, flowers and sliced egg around it; if you prefer, build the wreath on the platter before dressing and turn the salad into the centre.
- The eggsHard-boiled and cooled thoroughly before slicing, or the yolks smear. An egg slicer or a thin wet knife gives the clean rounds the presentation depends on.
Oscar Tschirky's book collects the repertoire of the Waldorf's kitchens at the turn of the twentieth century, and this one is as much a table ornament as a dish: concentric rings of leaf, flower and sliced egg on a platter. Nasturtiums had been a kitchen-garden plant in England and America well before the nineteenth century, valued for peppery leaves and for buds pickled as a substitute for capers, and the pairing of nasturtium with the two cresses is a straightforward exercise in stacking pungency. The equal-parts dressing places the recipe in an older tradition than the modern three-to-one vinaigrette.