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Apple Salad (Pretty salad is made)
A pretty salad is made by scooping out the inside of red cheeked apples, leaving a substantial wall, mixing the pulp with an equal quantity of English walnuts and celery, seasoning with salt and mayonnaise and filling back into the shells.
A Waldorf salad served in its own apple shell. The whole thing hinges on keeping the cut apple from browning between scooping and serving.
- Stop the browningCut apple flesh goes brown within minutes. Toss the diced pulp in lemon juice as you work, and brush the cut rims of the shells with it too, or the finished dish looks tired before it reaches the table.
- Choose the apple"Red cheeked" means looks, not variety — the point is a handsome shell. A firm, sweet-tart apple that holds its shape works best: Gala, Braeburn, Honeycrisp, Cortland. Soft mealy apples collapse when hollowed.
- Hollowing them outSlice off the top quarter as a lid, then work with a melon baller or a sturdy teaspoon, leaving a wall about half an inch thick. Trim a thin sliver off the base so each apple sits upright without rolling.
- "English walnuts"Simply the common walnut, as distinct from the American black walnut, which is far stronger and oilier. Ordinary supermarket walnut halves are what is meant. Toasting them briefly improves the flavour, though the original does not ask for it.
- Proportions"An equal quantity" is ambiguous: it may mean walnuts and celery each equal to the apple pulp, or the two together equal to it. Read the first way it gives a very nutty salad; roughly equal parts apple and celery with rather less walnut suits most modern palates.
- The mayonnaiseHomemade mayonnaise of the period was often sharper than the jarred kind. Loosen commercial mayonnaise with a spoonful of lemon juice or cream if you like, and dress lightly — enough to coat, not to pool in the shell.
- Yield and servingOne filled apple per person as a first course or a lunch salad. Serve on a lettuce leaf, and fill no more than an hour ahead; celery weeps and the mayonnaise thins if it stands.
This is a dressed-up version of the salad that came out of New York's Waldorf Hotel in the mid-1890s, generally credited to the maître d'hôtel Oscar Tschirky: apple, celery and mayonnaise, with walnuts becoming standard soon afterward. It spread quickly through American cookbooks, and it belonged to a broader turn-of-the-century enthusiasm for cold salads bound with mayonnaise. Serving food back inside its own hollowed shell — apples, tomatoes, green peppers, orange halves — was one of the era's favourite tricks for making a plain mixture look like a course.