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Lettuce Salad
Take two fine lettuces, remove the outer green leaves, wash and wipe, place them in a salad-bowl, sprinkle over one tablespoonful of chopped chives, half a teaspoonful each of chopped chervil and tarragon, and season with one pinch of salt, half a pinch of pepper dissolved in two tablespoonfuls of vinegar and a tablespoonful and a half of oil. Mix thoroughly, and serve.
A plain herbed green salad from the Waldorf's kitchen, with a dressing built directly in the bowl rather than whisked separately. Two details need attention: the lettuce and the acid.
- Dry the leaves properly"Wash and wipe" is the hinge of the whole dish. Water clinging to the leaves keeps the oil from adhering and thins the dressing into a puddle at the bottom of the bowl. Spin or blot until the leaves are genuinely dry.
- What "two fine lettuces" meansIn 1896 this most likely meant a soft butterhead — Boston or Bibb — rather than the crisphead lettuce that only later became the American market standard. Two heads of Boston lettuce yield roughly six to eight loosely packed cups.
- The vinegar ratioTwo tablespoons vinegar to one and a half of oil is more acid than oil, which will read as very sharp to a modern palate accustomed to three parts oil to one of vinegar. If you want the period effect, use a mild wine vinegar; if you want a dressing you will finish, cut the vinegar to two teaspoons.
- Pepper "dissolved" in vinegarPepper does not dissolve. The instruction means to stir the ground pepper and salt into the vinegar first so the seasoning is distributed evenly instead of landing in patches on the leaves — worth doing, and best done in a small cup before it goes over the salad.
- A pinch, and half a pinchThere is no fixed conversion here. Read the salt as a scant quarter teaspoon and the pepper as a generous eighth, then taste a dressed leaf and adjust.
- The herbsChives, chervil and tarragon are three of the classic French fines herbes, and all three must be fresh. Dried chervil and dried chives contribute almost nothing; dried tarragon is harsher and would dominate. If chervil is unavailable, flat-leaf parsley is the usual stand-in, though it lacks the faint anise note.
- Dress at the tableOnce mixed, soft lettuce collapses within minutes. Have the bowl, leaves and seasoned vinegar ready separately and combine immediately before serving.
- YieldServes four as a side salad, or two if it is standing in for a course on its own.
Oscar Tschirky came to the Waldorf as its maître d'hôtel in 1893 and published his cook book in 1896, when the hotel's dining rooms were setting the standard for French service in New York. This salad shows the house style in miniature: no invention, just correct materials handled quickly — a soft head lettuce, the fines herbes trio, and a dressing built in the bowl rather than whisked separately. The book's plainness on measurements is also of its time: professional recipes were written as reminders for people who already knew what a pinch was.