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Cucumber Salad (Frequently served from scooped)
Cucumber salad is frequently served from scooped out cucumber shells which are cut in halves lengthwise. These should be buried in ice until they are wanted for the table. Chopped olives, then strips of red pepper, nasturtium seeds and capers, while the shells should be served on beds of small yellow lettuce leaves. Serve with a mayonnaise or French salad dressing.
This is a presentation formula rather than a measured recipe: cucumber halves hollowed into boats, refilled with a sharp, briny mix, and set on lettuce. The proportions are left to the cook, so treat it as an assembly method.
- Choose the right cucumberThe recipe assumes the seedy middle is scooped out and discarded. Two long English or several Persian cucumbers hollow out cleanly with a teaspoon and need no peeling.
- "Buried in ice"The shells were packed in ice until serving to firm them. An hour in the coldest part of the refrigerator, cut side down on a rack, does much the same job.
- Salt and drain firstSalt and drain first (optional) -- salting the hollowed shells lightly, inverting them for twenty to thirty minutes and blotting dry limits the water they shed into the dressing, though it costs some crispness.
- Nasturtium seedsThe green seed pods, pickled in vinegar, were the household substitute for capers and were often called "poor man's capers." They are rarely sold; more capers, or pickled green peppercorns, stand in.
- Red pepperHere this means strips of sweet red pepper or pimiento for colour, not chile. Canned pimiento would serve as well as fresh.
- Small yellow lettuce leavesThe pale inner heart leaves of a soft head lettuce; romaine hearts are the closest common substitute.
- DressingPeriod mayonnaise was generally thick enough to hold a shape; a thinned modern jarred mayonnaise will run. French dressing in books of this kind usually meant simply oil, vinegar, salt and pepper mixed to order.
- YieldAllow one half-shell per person as a first course or salad alongside cold meat. Fill and dress at the last moment.
Hollowed vegetables used as edible cases -- tomato shells, pepper cups, cucumber boats -- were a familiar feature of American salad chapters in this period. The style depended on two things a modern kitchen takes for granted: a steady supply of ice, which is why the shells are buried rather than merely chilled, and bottled pickles and olives, which supplied the sharp notes. Nasturtium seeds are the older item in the list; households pickled them from their own garden flowers, and they are often said to have been recommended in place of capers well into later cookery writing.