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Orange and Tomato Salad
3 tablespoonfuls melted Crisco 4 tomatoes 4 oranges 1 tablespoonful chopped parsley Tarragon vinegar Salt Peel oranges and tomatoes, and slice and arrange alternately in salad bowl. Mix juice squeezed from "tops and bottoms" of oranges with an equal quantity of tarragon vinegar, add Crisco and salt to taste. Pour over fruit and sprinkle chopped parsley on top.
A straightforward composed salad from a promotional cookbook, with one instruction that no modern cook should follow literally.
- The melted Crisco is the problemCrisco is solid at room temperature and sets hard the moment it meets cold fruit, leaving white flecks and a waxy coating. Use three tablespoons of a neutral salad oil, or olive oil, and whisk the dressing cold.
- Dressing proportionsThe recipe gives no measure for the acid beyond "equal quantity" of tarragon vinegar to the squeezed orange juice. The trimmed ends of four oranges might yield two to three tablespoons of juice, which with an equal quantity of vinegar gives roughly a quarter to a third of a cup of liquid against three tablespoons of fat — sharper than a standard vinaigrette, which suits the tomatoes.
- "Tops and bottoms"This means the disc trimmed from each end of the orange before peeling. Squeeze them in your fist over a strainer rather than discarding them; that is the whole source of orange juice here.
- Tarragon vinegarStill sold, though less common than it was in 1913. White wine vinegar with a bruised tarragon sprig steeped in it for an hour is a close stand-in; do not substitute plain cider vinegar, as the tarragon is doing real work against the orange.
- Peeling the orangesPeel deeply enough to remove all white pith, then slice crosswise into rounds about a quarter inch thick. Pith left on turns the salad bitter as it sits in the acid.
- Peeling the tomatoesThe instruction to peel is easiest with a ten-second dip in boiling water and a cold plunge. Slice to match the orange rounds so the alternating arrangement holds together.
- Season and serve promptlySalt the tomatoes only just before dressing, or they will weep and thin the vinaigrette. Serves four as a side salad.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble to introduce hydrogenated cottonseed oil to American cooks, and its recipes were chosen less for their own merits than to demonstrate that the new fat could go anywhere lard, butter or olive oil went. That agenda shows plainly here: a cold citrus-and-tomato salad has no need of a shortening, and the book's insistence on melting Crisco into the dressing is advertising rather than cookery. The salad itself belongs to a fashion of the 1900s and 1910s for fruit in the salad course, encouraged by the citrus arriving by rail from Florida and California, and by the growing acceptance of the raw tomato in American kitchens. Tarragon vinegar was a common pantry item in the period, and one way to give such a salad a French accent without a French kitchen.