Dinner Salads
1. Apple and Grape Combine equal parts of apple cut in match-like strips and halved and seeded Malaga or Tokay grapes with plain French or French Fruit Dressing to moisten. Serve in nests of lettuce garnished with cream cheese balls. 2. Cucumber and Green Pepper-To a pint of sliced, crisped cucumber add two tablespoons minced green pepper, a teaspoon minced chives and plain or Piquant French Dressing. Serve with lettuce or escarole. 3. Shredded Orange or Grape Fruit-Peel one large orange or half grape fruit and shred the pulp. Add one-half cup plain French Dressing and serve with romaine or lettuce cut in quarters. Garnish with slices of snappy cheese. 4. Roquefort Cream-Beat three-fourths cup Roquefort Dressing into a cup of whipped cream. Serve in nests of lettuce. Dust with paprika. 5. Cole-Slaw-Finely shred enough crisped cabbage to make three cups. Combine with Plain French Dressing and minced parsley or with Mazola Mayonnaise or Cooked Salad Dressing. A little minced green pepper or a few chopped nuts, some shredded apple, diced pimiento or grated carrot may be own CHILDREN crave sweets. They are energetic little beings, rapidly burning up food fuel. Teach them to make their candy. Begin with Creamed Maple Balls, then Peanut Brittle and Taffy. Serve the candy for dessert piece or two a day.
The children will be delighted. Via the Candy Road is a wonderful way to interest children in cooking. -a added. a Lettuce, Romaine or Cress Dressed at the Table Arrange well-crisped lettuce or other salad greens in good-sized salad bowl.
Place beside it cruets containing vinegar and Mazola and salt, pepper and paprika shakers. For salad for six, measure three tablespoons Mazola and pour into the salad. Turn over and over with the salad fork and spoon and add salt, pepper, paprika and one and one-half tablespoon vinegar. Continue turning until the leaves look a little wilted.
Five quick salads and a table-dressed bowl of greens, all built around the same handful of dressings the book covers elsewhere. Nothing here needs cooking, so the whole thing rests on the quality of the produce and the oil-to-vinegar ratio.
- Mazola means corn oilThis book was issued by the makers of Mazola, so the oil is named at every turn. Any neutral oil works; corn oil is still sold and behaves the same way in a French dressing.
- The French dressing ratioThe table-dressed greens give the proportions plainly: three tablespoons oil to one and a half tablespoons vinegar, or 2:1. That is sharper than the 3:1 most modern recipes use, so taste before adding all the vinegar.
- Malaga and Tokay grapesBoth were common seeded table grapes of the period, which is why the recipe says to halve and seed them. Any firm seedless red or green grape substitutes; simply halve them.
- "Snappy cheese"Period shorthand for a sharp, tangy cheese; an aged cheddar is a reasonable stand-in, though the recipe names no variety. Slice it thin so it reads as a garnish rather than a second course.
- Roquefort cream quantitiesThree-quarters cup of dressing beaten into a cup of whipped cream makes a soft, mousse-like mound. Whip the cream to soft peaks only, since it will be beaten again when the dressing goes in.
- A pint of cucumberA pint measure of sliced cucumber is about two cups, roughly one large cucumber. "Crisped" means soaked or chilled in ice water, then drained and dried well so the dressing is not diluted.
- Escarole and romaineBoth are still sold under those names. Escarole is the broad, slightly bitter chicory, and it stands up to a sharp dressing better than lettuce does.
- Dress the greens lastFor the tableside bowl, the oil goes on first and the vinegar and salt afterward. Coating the leaves in oil before the acid hits them is what keeps them from collapsing, and the recipe's instruction to stop when they look "a little wilted" is the signal to serve immediately.
- Cole-slaw yieldThree cups of finely shredded cabbage is roughly a third to a half of a small head. Salt it lightly and let it drain if you want a less watery bowl.
Cookbooks published by oil, starch and syrup manufacturers were one of the main ways American home cooks learned new dishes in the first decades of the twentieth century, and this collection belongs squarely to that genre: every dressing named in it points back to the company's own product. The salads themselves record a moment when raw vegetables and fruit were being actively promoted as healthful additions to the dinner table rather than mere garnishes, and when the composed salad served in a "nest" of lettuce was a common restaurant and club presentation. Dressing greens at the table from cruets, as described at the end, was a mark of a well-set dining room.