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Onion and Tomato Salad
Choose half a dozen firm, ripe tomatoes of medium size, wipe them with a wet towel and cut them into slices about one-fourth inch thick; peel a medium-sized Spanish onion and slice it very thin. Arrange the sliced onion and tomatoes in layers in a salad-bowl and pour over them a plain salad dressing made by mixing together one teacupful of salad oil, two tablespoonfuls of vinegar, one-half teaspoonful of salt and one-half saltspoonful of pepper. Use the salad as soon as made. Young green onions may be used for this salad.
A plainly built summer salad whose only real technique is restraint: it is dressed and eaten, not marinated. Two details in the original need translating before you start.
- TeacupfulPeriod teacups are not standardised; a teacupful is usually reckoned somewhere between 4 and 6 fluid ounces, so roughly 1/2 to 3/4 cup of oil. Either way it is a great deal of dressing for six tomatoes; expect to use half of it and keep the rest.
- The oil-to-vinegar ratioDepending on how the teacup is read, this works out somewhere between 4:1 and 6:1 oil to vinegar, leaner in acid than the 3:1 commonly given today. Taste and add vinegar if it reads flat.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. So the dressing carries 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon pepper — season again at the table once the tomato juice has diluted it.
- Spanish onionThe large, mild, straw-skinned onion still sold under that name, or a sweet onion of the Vidalia type. A standard yellow cooking onion sliced raw will overpower the tomatoes.
- Slice it very thinThin enough to be translucent, which a mandoline or a very sharp knife will do. Thick raw onion is the difference between this salad working and not.
- Use as soon as madeThe instruction is the hinge. Salted tomato slices weep within minutes, and the layers collapse into a watery bowl. Cut, layer, dress, carry to the table.
- No peeling, no seedingThe tomatoes are wiped and sliced skin-on. Choose fruit firm enough to hold a quarter-inch slice; anything soft enough to need peeling is too ripe for this treatment.
- YieldSix medium tomatoes and one large onion serve six as a side salad.
Oscar Tschirky's book records the Waldorf's kitchen and its handling of raw tomato. What makes this a hotel recipe rather than a farmhouse one is the specification: firm, ripe, medium, quarter-inch, very thin, used at once. The dressing is the plainest possible French dressing, oil and vinegar with salt and pepper, weighted heavily toward oil. The closing note that green onions may be substituted suggests the salad's identity rests on the raw onion-and-tomato pairing rather than on any one variety.