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Tomato Salad
Pour boiling water over the required number of tomatoes, then drain them and remove the skins; leave until quite cold, then divide into sections. Put the tomatoes into a salad-bowl, garnish with chopped tarragon leaves, pour a plain dressing of oil and vinegar seasoned with salt and pepper over them, and serve. A mayonnaise dressing can be used in place of a plain dressing, if preferred.
A plain hotel-style tomato salad that lives or dies on the tomatoes themselves. Little needs translating, but a few points of technique are worth making explicit.
- The hinge: chill after peelingThe instruction to "leave until quite cold" before cutting is the whole method. Tomatoes scalded and cut while still warm weep badly and dilute the dressing; cooled first, they hold their sections and their juice.
- Blanching time"Pour boiling water over" implies a brief scald rather than a standing soak; in practice 15 to 30 seconds is usually enough to loosen the skins. Scoring a shallow cross in the base first, and dropping the tomatoes into cold water after draining, are modern refinements not in the original.
- "Divide into sections"Cut into wedges following the natural lobes of the fruit, six to eight per medium tomato, rather than slicing crosswise. The recipe specifies only that they go into a salad-bowl.
- A plain dressingSomething in the region of three parts oil to one of vinegar is a common period proportion, whisked with salt and pepper only. Olive oil and a good wine vinegar suit it; the recipe as written assumes no mustard, sugar or garlic, and adding them changes the character.
- TarragonFresh tarragon leaves, chopped just before serving, are what the recipe means. Dried tarragon is a poor substitute here since there is no cooking to bring it round; if you have none, chervil or chives are closer in spirit than basil.
- SaltingSeason the wedges lightly and let them stand a few minutes before dressing, then pour off any pooled liquid. This is not in the original but it keeps the vinaigrette from breaking on the plate.
- Mayonnaise variantThe alternative dressing would have been a hand-made mayonnaise, thinned slightly with vinegar or lemon so it coats rather than clings. It contains raw egg; commercial mayonnaise, made with pasteurised egg, is the practical choice.
- YieldNo quantity is given because the recipe is scaled to the table. One medium tomato per person as a side salad is a reasonable working figure; dress sparingly and to taste, as the original leaves the amount open.
Oscar Tschirky was the long-serving maitre d'hotel of the Waldorf, and by the 1890s the tomato was a well-established fixture of the American summer table. A salad this bare is a mark of confidence in supply: it assumes ripe, flavourful tomatoes and fresh tarragon, luxuries a home cook could not always count on. Scalding and peeling before dressing was familiar practice for tomatoes meant to be eaten cold. The offer of mayonnaise as an alternative reflects the era's fondness for it as a general-purpose salad sauce.