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Watercress and Tomato Salad
Plunge four medium, sound red tomatoes in boiling water for one minutes, take up with a skimmer, carefully peel, let cool off, then cut each tomato in eight equal sections and place in a salad bowl. Trim off large stalks, remove any stale leaves that may adhere to one large or two medium bunches fresh, green watercress, wash thoroughly, drain well on a cloth, and add to tomatoes. Season with four tablespoons salad dressing mix well and serve. N.B. This salad should be seasoned and mixed only at the very last moment.
A straightforward composed salad whose only real technique is the tomato peel. The note at the end is the whole point: dressed watercress collapses fast.
- Dress at the tableWatercress wilts within minutes of meeting acid and salt. Have the bowl assembled and the dressing measured, but combine them only as the salad goes out.
- Blanching the tomatoesOne minute in boiling water is the upper limit for ripe summer fruit; 15-30 seconds is usually enough once the skin splits at a scored X on the base. Drop them into ice water rather than leaving them to "cool off" on their own, or the outer flesh turns mealy.
- "Salad dressing"In an American cookbook of this era the term generally means a plain oil-and-vinegar French dressing, commonly somewhere around three parts oil to one part vinegar with salt and pepper. Four tablespoons is modest for four tomatoes and a large bunch of cress; the leaves should glisten, not swim.
- Buying watercressA tied bunch of the sort the recipe assumes is likely to be larger than a modern supermarket clamshell, so you may need more than one package to match it.
- Washing and dryingCress grows in water and holds grit at the leaf joints. Swish in a full basin, lift out rather than pouring off, and dry properly, on a cloth as directed or in a spinner. Wet leaves dilute the dressing and refuse to hold it.
- Cutting the tomatoesEight sections from a medium tomato gives thin wedges that shed juice into the bowl. Salt them separately a few minutes ahead and drain if you want the dressing to stay sharp.
- YieldNot stated; the quantities suggest roughly four as a side salad.
Watercress reached the American table by way of England, where commercial beds along chalk streams in Hampshire and Kent supplied London markets through the nineteenth century, and where it was cheap enough to be sold in the street as a breakfast food for the poor. By the time this book appeared, cress was valued for its peppery bite and its usefulness as a garnish under roast game and poultry. The pairing with peeled tomatoes reflects a particular strain of early twentieth-century American salad-making, in which raw vegetables were prepared with the same fussiness as cooked ones: skins removed, sections cut to a uniform count, everything held back until the moment of serving.