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Salad, Stetson
Cut two good-sized, freshly cooked, cold French artichoke bottoms (or canned if no fresh at hand) in half-inch pieces and place in a salad bowl. Cut in same shape the heart of a good stalk well-washed and thoroughly drained celery and leave on a cloth. Peel, remove hard stalk from centre, as well as eyes, of three half-inch-thick slices of a fresh pineapple, cut in half-inch pieces and place with artichokes. Cut in half-inch pieces three Spanish sweet peppers and sprinkle over artichokes and pineapple. Have three tablespoons freshly cooked, well-drained, cold fresh peas and also sprinkle over other ingredients in bowl. Neatly wipe and plunge three small, firm red tomatoes in boiling water for a minute, take up, drain, skin with a towel, remove stems, cut in quarters, add celery to bowl, gently shuffle contents and add tomatoes. Have on a saucer one and a half tablespoons olive oil, three-quarters tablespoon strained juice of a lemon, a half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons paprika. Briskly mix, pour over salad, and just a second before serving gently mix whole well together and send to table with four tablespoons mayonnaise dressing separately, or mix it at the very last moment.
A composed vegetable-and-fruit salad in the Delmonico's manner, built from separately cooked and cooled components. Nothing here is difficult, but the whole thing depends on everything being cold and bone dry before it meets the oil.
- Dry, then dressThe celery is "thoroughly drained" and then left on a cloth, and the peas are specified as "well-drained." Water clinging to the pieces will thin the oil-and-lemon dressing and turn the bowl watery within minutes. Drain the pineapple pieces too, and dress no more than a second or two before it goes out, as the recipe insists.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons of paprika is a half teaspoon. Use sweet Hungarian paprika, not smoked or hot.
- Spanish sweet peppersThese are pimientos — thick-walled, sweet red peppers, usually sold jarred or canned today. Drain and pat them dry; a roasted red bell pepper is the closest fresh substitute.
- Artichoke bottomsThe fleshy base of a globe artichoke with the leaves and choke removed, not the marinated hearts sold in oil. Canned or frozen artichoke bottoms work; if you use marinated hearts, rinse them or the marinade will fight the lemon dressing.
- Fresh peasThree tablespoons of shelled fresh peas, boiled briefly and cooled. Frozen peas are the honest modern stand-in — thaw and dry them rather than cooking them soft.
- The tomatoesOne minute in boiling water is only to loosen the skins; pull them out promptly and cool them, or the quarters will collapse into the salad. They go in last and are barely mixed, so they keep their shape.
- The dressing ratioOne and a half tablespoons oil to three-quarters tablespoon lemon juice is a sharp 2:1, more acidic than the usual 3:1 vinaigrette. Taste before pouring if you prefer something closer to 3:1.
- Mayonnaise and pineappleFresh pineapple contains bromelain, a protein-digesting enzyme, and mayonnaise left sitting on it may slacken. Whether that is why the recipe sends the mayonnaise separately is not stated; serving the dressing apart, or mixing it at the last moment, was in any case common restaurant practice.
- YieldNo yield is given. The quantities suggest roughly four small first-course servings, or two as a light luncheon salad. Chill the bowl.
The International Cook Book belongs to the era of the great American hotel and restaurant kitchens, where a salad was routinely named after the guest who ordered it or the man being flattered — Waldorf, Rachel, Dumas, and here Stetson, generally taken to refer to the Philadelphia hatting family, though the attribution is traditional rather than documented. The pineapple is a hint of period, if not a precise date: by the 1900s fast refrigerated steamers from the Caribbean and Florida had made fresh pineapple a reliable winter ingredient in East Coast cities, and cooks seized on it for exactly this kind of sweet-against-savory composition, alongside celery hearts, artichoke bottoms and jarred Spanish pimientos. The construction is classic restaurant method rather than home method: each element cooked separately, cooled separately, cut to a uniform half-inch, and combined only at the moment of service, with the mayonnaise offered apart so the kitchen cannot be blamed for a salad that has wept on the way to the table.