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Nassau Salad
Trim a small head of fresh escarole, wash and thoroughly drain. Finely slice two branches sound, well-cleaned celery, two seeded green peppers, and place these three articles in a bowl. Plunge two medium, red tomatoes in boiling water for one minute, remove, peel, let cool off, cut, when thoroughly cold, into quarters and add to the rest. Place in a bowl two tablespoons thick cream and whisk it up to a stiff froth, Add two tablespoons mayonnaise, one tablespoon good vinegar, a half teaspoon salt and three saltspoons white pepper, whisk again for one minute, pour dressing over salad, mix well and serve.
A cream-lightened mayonnaise dressing over a crisp winter salad. Nothing here is difficult, but two of the measurements need translating and one is probably more pepper than you want.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is generally reckoned a quarter teaspoon, so three saltspoons is about three-quarters of a teaspoon of white pepper for a salad of this size. That reads as very hot by current taste; a quarter teaspoon is closer to modern balance, added to taste at the end.
- EscaroleSold as escarole or broad-leaved endive, and sometimes mislabelled chicory. Choose a head with pale inner leaves, which are the sweet ones; the dark outer leaves are aggressively bitter and are worth trimming away rather than including.
- "Two branches" of celeryPeriod usage means two ribs from the head, not two whole heads. Slice them thin on a slight diagonal so they stay crisp under the dressing.
- The hinge: whip the cream firstThe cream is beaten to a stiff froth before the mayonnaise and vinegar go in. Added in the other order, the extra liquid and fat make it much harder to get any air into the cream, and the dressing comes out thin. Use cream at 36% fat or higher and have it cold.
- TomatoesOne minute in boiling water loosens the skins; a quick dunk in ice water after makes the peeling easier and stops them softening. The instruction to cool them thoroughly before cutting matters, as warm tomato flesh releases juice that thins the dressing.
- Vinegar"Good vinegar" in a recipe of this kind most likely meant white wine or cider vinegar rather than distilled white, which is sharper and flatter. One tablespoon against two of mayonnaise and two of cream is a mild dressing by design.
- Dress at the last momentEscarole holds up better than lettuce, but a cream dressing soon pulls water from the peppers and tomatoes. Combine and serve straight away.
- YieldProbably four side servings, or two as a lunch salad, though the recipe gives no yield.
Salads named for places were a fashion of the hotel and steamship kitchens of the early twentieth century, and this one is often said to belong to a period when Nassau in the Bahamas was becoming a winter resort for wealthy Americans and their cooks. The link to the island appears to be a seasonal one: escarole, celery, peppers and tomatoes were presumably what a good kitchen could count on in February, when northern lettuce was poor and hothouse produce expensive. The dressing is a mousseline in the loosest sense, whipped cream folded into mayonnaise, a French hotel trick that softens the mayonnaise and stretches it.