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Radish Salad
Scrape well four large radishes, cut them into thin slices, and put them into a salad-bowl. Peel and slice a moderate-sized cucumber, and put it in with the radishes. Mix in equal quantities salad-oil and vinegar, season with salt and pepper, and pour the mixture over the salad. Sprinkle some chopped capers and herbs over the salad, and serve.
A raw salad that needs no cooking and very little equipment; the only real decisions are which radish is meant and how long the dressed vegetables sit before they go to the table.
- What "four large radishes" meansThe phrase is ambiguous: it may mean the long white or black winter radish rather than the small red globes sold in bunches today, though the recipe does not say. Four large winter radishes make a generous bowl; if using red globes, count on a bunch or two, around 12-16, to balance one cucumber.
- Scrape, not peelScraping with a knife back removes grit and the coarsest skin while leaving the peppery layer just beneath. Black radishes have a bitter skin worth removing entirely; red ones need only a scrub.
- Cucumbers of 1896Cucumbers -- Cucumbers of the period were often thick-skinned and seedy, which may be why the recipe says peel. A modern English or Persian cucumber can go in unpeeled; if using a waxed field cucumber, peel it and scrape out the seed core.
- The dressing ratioEqual oil and vinegar is sharp by current taste. Three parts oil to one vinegar is the usual modern reading; taste and adjust rather than measuring blind.
- "Salad-oil"This meant a mild, refined oil, frequently olive but sometimes cottonseed, chosen for neutrality rather than flavor. A light olive oil or a neutral seed oil matches the intent better than a peppery estate oil.
- Dress at the last minuteSalt and vinegar draw water out of both radish and cucumber within minutes, and the bowl turns to a pool. Slice ahead if you like, but combine, dress and serve in one movement.
- Herbs and capersThe "herbs" are unspecified; parsley, chervil, chives or tarragon would all suit. Rinse brined capers before chopping, or the salad picks up a second dose of salt.
- YieldNo yield is given; the quantities suggest roughly four as a side, or two as a light first course.
Oscar Tschirky ran the dining rooms of the Waldorf, and later the Waldorf-Astoria, from the hotel's opening in 1893; his 1896 Cook Book is a vast compendium of some nine hundred pages, much of it French hotel cookery translated into plain American English for a home audience. Salads like this one belong to the tradition of the simple salade served between or alongside heavier courses, and the pairing of radish with cucumber and a vinaigrette is often said to have been long familiar in Europe before it reached a New York hotel menu. The chopped capers might be read as the mark of a professional's version rather than a farmhouse one: a small brined accent to give a plain raw salad some depth without adding another cooked element. Oscar is often credited with the Waldorf salad of apples, celery and mayonnaise, which appears in this same book and made his name far more durably than a bowl of sliced radishes.