Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Waldorf Salad
Waldorf Salad
Peel two raw apples and cut them into small pieces, say about half an inch square, also cut some celery the same way, and mix it with the apple. Be very careful not to let any seeds of the apples be mixed with it. The salad must be dressed with a good mayonnaise.
The original Waldorf salad is apple, celery and mayonnaise — no nuts, no grapes, no lettuce. The instructions are sparse, so most of the work is in judgment.
- ProportionsOscar gives none. Roughly equal volumes of diced apple and celery is the usual reading, with just enough mayonnaise to coat rather than flood. Two apples plus three or four celery ribs serves four as a side.
- Which appleA firm, tart, crisp variety holds its shape and cuts the mayonnaise: Granny Smith, Braeburn, or a good Winesap. Mealy apples collapse into the dressing within minutes.
- The half-inch diceThe size is not decoration. Cut the celery to match the apple exactly so the two register as one texture; uneven pieces make the salad read as celery with apple in it.
- BrowningPeeled apple oxidises fast. Cut it last, toss it with a little lemon juice, or fold it straight into the mayonnaise, which seals the cut surfaces.
- The mayonnaiseIn 1896 this meant a hand-made egg-yolk emulsion; period recipes are sharpened with lemon juice, vinegar, or both, and are generally thicker than jarred mayonnaise. If using commercial mayonnaise, slacken it with lemon juice and a pinch of salt so it coats without gluing.
- CeleryUse the pale inner ribs and strip the strings from the outer ones with a peeler. Old celery is fibrous and will pull apart in the mouth rather than snap.
- ServingDress within an hour of eating and keep cold. Held overnight, the apple and celery weep and the dressing thins into a puddle.
- WalnutsThey are not in this text and were added later. If you want them, toast and chop them and add at the last moment so they stay crisp.
The salad is generally credited to Oscar Tschirky, the Swiss-born maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf in New York, who presided over the dining rooms from the hotel's opening in 1893 and published The Cook Book by "Oscar" of the Waldorf in 1896, where it appears among the salads. Its fame rests partly on how little there is to it: two ingredients and a dressing any decent kitchen could make, served in a hotel that stood for expense. The walnuts that most people now consider essential are not here; they seem to have entered later versions of the dish, as, by most accounts, did the grapes, raisins and lettuce cups. Oscar is often said to have been more an orchestrator than a cook, and the recipe reads that way: it tells a trained kitchen the shape of a dish and trusts it with the rest.