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Waldorf Salad
1 cup cubed apple. 1 cup celery. 1 cup nut meats Salad dressing to moisten Cut slice from tops of green or red apples; scoop out the inside pulp; leaving just enough to hold the skin in place. Fill the shells with salad mixture and serve on lettuce leaves. A little salad dressing may be put on top of each. The apple, celery, and nut mixture may be served on lettuce with salad dressing. 2 oranges 3 bananas
The ingredient list here has been mangled in printing — only the nut meats, oranges and bananas survive with quantities, while the apples and celery named in the method never got their line. Treat it as a serving idea rather than a full formula.
- The missing quantitiesFor four apple shells, reckon on the flesh of 4 medium apples diced, 1 cup diced celery and the 1 cup of nut meats given. The 2 oranges and 3 bananas appear to belong to a fruit variation of the same salad, not to the celery version.
- Nut meatsSimply shelled nuts. Walnuts are standard for a Waldorf; toast them briefly and cool before mixing, since raw walnut skins can taste flat against sweet apple.
- Salad dressingIn a book of this vintage "salad dressing" on a fruit salad usually indicates mayonnaise or a cooked boiled dressing rather than a vinaigrette. A mayonnaise slackened with a spoonful of cream or lemon juice suits the apple better than mayonnaise straight from the jar.
- Scooping the shellsA melon baller or a sturdy teaspoon works better than a knife. Leave about a quarter-inch wall or the shell collapses under the filling.
- BrowningToss the diced apple and the hollowed shells with lemon juice as you go. The original assumes you will assemble and serve at once; apple cut ahead discolours quickly.
- If you use the bananasAdd sliced banana at the last moment only. It softens and weeps quickly once dressed, and will turn the whole bowl to paste if mixed in early.
- YieldOne filled apple per person, on a leaf of lettuce, as a first course or a lunch salad. The loose mixture serves four to six.
The Waldorf salad is generally traced to the Waldorf Hotel in New York in the 1890s and to its maître d'hôtel Oscar Tschirky, whose printed version was nothing more than apple, celery and mayonnaise — the walnuts were a later addition that has since become near-universal. By the time books like this one appeared, the dish had passed into the domestic repertoire, where it needed no cooking, used cheap winter apples and stored celery, and looked like restaurant food when served in a hollowed apple on a lettuce leaf. The orange-and-banana variant tacked onto the end of this entry fits the period's enthusiasm for fruit salads bound with mayonnaise, a combination that reads oddly now but was common American luncheon fare in the earlier twentieth century.