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Tomato and Artichoke Salad
Prepare a mixture or dressing of olive oil, vinegar, tarragon, chervil, salt and pepper. Have ready some boiled artichokes, cut them in slices, using the under part only, and also cut off an equal number of slices of tomatoes. Dip them into the dressing, arrange in a salad-bowl, pour over the dressing, and serve.
A vinaigrette salad with no quantities given, which is normal for Oscar's book — it assumes a cook who knows the proportions. The only structural instruction is the one about which part of the artichoke to use.
- "The under part only"This means the artichoke bottom, the fleshy base left after the leaves and choke are removed. Frozen or jarred artichoke bottoms work; drained tinned hearts are acceptable but softer and will not slice as cleanly.
- Boiling the artichokesWhole globe artichokes need 25–40 minutes in acidulated water depending on size, until a leaf pulls away with no resistance. Cool them before trimming to the bottom, or the flesh tears.
- Dressing proportionsNone are given. Three parts olive oil to one part wine vinegar with salt and pepper is the standard reading; tarragon vinegar in place of plain vinegar suits the herbs.
- Tarragon and chervilBoth are meant fresh and finely chopped — roughly a tablespoon of each for a salad for four. Dried chervil has almost no flavour; if you cannot get it fresh, use parsley and lean on the tarragon.
- Salt the tomatoes firstSlice, salt lightly, and let them drain ten minutes before dressing, or the tomato water will thin the vinaigrette in the bowl.
- "Dip them into the dressing"The dipping is a coating step, not a marinade. Artichoke bottoms go slack if left sitting in dressing; assemble and serve within a few minutes.
- YieldFour artichoke bottoms and two or three medium tomatoes, alternated in overlapping slices, serve four as a first course.
Oscar Tschirky ran the dining rooms of the Waldorf from 1893 and published his large cook book in 1896, and this salad is characteristic of the plain end of his repertoire: a French vinaigrette dressed with fines herbes, applied to two vegetables that carried very different weight at the time. Artichokes were comparatively costly in New York markets, sold whole and requiring a cook willing to boil and trim them for the sake of one disc of flesh apiece. Tomatoes, by contrast, were by the 1890s cheap and everywhere. Many recipes in Oscar's book give no quantities; it was written for professional kitchens and for households with a trained cook, where a dressing was something one balanced by taste rather than measured.