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Truffle and Celery Salad
Cut some cooked truffles into slices, and then into quarters, stir them in with the hearts of a few roots of celery, also cut up into small pieces about three-fourths of an inch in length, put them into a salad-bowl, pour over a dressing composed of oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, and serve.
A two-ingredient salad that lives or dies on the truffles, so the dressing should be built to flatter them rather than compete. Nothing here is difficult; the decisions are all about proportion.
- "Roots of celery"This means whole heads (bunches) of celery, not celeriac. A few heads yields only a modest amount of pale inner heart, which is all you want here — the outer ribs are too stringy and too green in flavour.
- "Cooked truffles"This most likely meant preserved truffles, which reached American kitchens tinned and already cooked in their own liquor. If you are working from fresh black truffle, it is better raw and shaved than cooked; if you have tinned truffle, drain it and save the liquor for the dressing.
- ProportionThe original gives no quantities. A workable ratio is about 2 cups of celery heart to 1 to 2 oz of truffle — enough that the truffle reads in every bite without the salad becoming an extravagance.
- The dressingA plain vinaigrette of the period ran roughly three parts oil to one part vinegar. Use a mild oil and a white wine vinegar; strong olive oil or cider vinegar will bury the truffle entirely. A spoonful of the truffle liquor, if you have it, is the one worthwhile addition.
- Dress at the last momentCelery heart cut three-quarters of an inch long stays crisp for only a short while once salted and acidified. Combine, dress, and take it to the table.
- YieldThe original specifies no quantities. At the proportion suggested above it makes about four small first-course or between-course servings, not a main-plate salad.
Oscar Tschirky's Waldorf menus were built on the French service of the 1890s, in which truffle appeared less as a flavouring than as a marker of expense — sliced into aspics, studded through galantines, and here paired with the cheapest possible foil. Celery was itself a semi-luxury in nineteenth-century America, grown in blanched beds and served upright in tall cut-glass vases so guests could see it; the pale heart was the prized part and the outer stalks went to soup. Pairing the two is a study in contrast rather than invention: the truffle supplies aroma, the celery supplies nothing but cold crunch and water. Truffles reached the American market largely in preserved form, which is why the recipe assumes them already cooked, and it is worth remembering that the apple, celery and mayonnaise mixture that took the hotel's name — traditionally credited to Oscar — leans on the same celery heart from the same larder.