Saturday, August 25, 2007

Salad Bizarre.

The Sunflower Salad of last week generated a little interest on account of it challenging the very notion of salad. It made me curious as to what else might pass as ‘salad’. I went first of all to the source of the recipe - The Lily Wallace New American Cook Book (1946), and have been unable to pursue the line of research any further after discovering this:

Frozen Waldorf Salad.
2 eggs
½ cup sugar.
1/8 teaspoon salt
½ cup pineapple juice
¼ cup lemon juice
½ cup finely chopped celery
½ cup shredded pineapple
1 cup whipping cream
2 apples, chopped finely.
Beat eggs slightly. Add the sugar, salt, and fruit juices. Cook over hot water until thick. Cool. Fold in fruit and whipped cream. Pour into refrigerator tray and freeze. Cut in squares and serve on a bed of lettuce. Serves 6.


Random Thoughts on the Concept of Frozen Waldorf Salad:
I suppose it is the celery that makes it salad.
I don’t know whether or not mayonnaise would be an improvement or not.
I think this is the salad you have when you are having ice-cream.
Or is it the ice-cream you are having when you are having salad?
It would be perfect for those moments when you think that life is short, so you want to eat dessert first, but are afraid to make it even shorter by doing so, so you compromise and have salad instead.
How many times was the recipe tested before it was deemed perfect enough to go into the book, and who was on the taste testing panel?
This salad idea renders me almost speechless.

Please add your own Random Thoughts in the comments section.

I am off to England tomorrow morning. Stories are already prepared, but their regular posting will be dependent on a number of things, the primary one being my ability to connect to the Internet successfully all by myself in strange places without the assistance of The Old Foodie Spouse. By the end of the week I will be at the home of my cousin, who has grandchildren of a certain age, and I am sure they will be a great help in matters technical.

Oxford Symposium Here I Come! I hope to meet some of you there.

7 comments:

  1. I think some salads are given the name of salad only in an effort to offer something that definitely is not salad but which has the name stamped on it so it must be. If you know what I mean.

    Isn't there a saying about mutton dressed as lamb? :)

    Enjoy your trip, Janet. Looking forward to hearing all about it!

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  2. Only in America! I'm sure I'll be able to find something to match it while you're at the Symposium. In the meantime, Bon Voyage.

    Update on the raspberry vinegar I made a couple of months back. No use for ice-cream - vinegar taste too pronounced, raspberry too weak. I suspect the Acton/Kitchiner method - three different lots of berries, soaked, not pulped in the vinegar - would yield better results, but cannot try because of expense and because of the impossibility of obtaining fully-ripe berries commercially down here.

    That said, it makes a damned good vinaigrette. Far better than the commercially-available raspberry types, which I avoid, so nothing was lost and I may well make it again for this specific use.

    Once more, all the best. Roger

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  3. Isn't Frozen Salad likely to be a precursor of Heston Blumenthal's Egg and Bacon Ice Cream...

    Pop into the Fat Duck while you're over and mention it to him, I bet it'll be on the menu before you're back on the plane to Australia!

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  4. I will bet it was canned pineapple and canned pineapple juice. My mother had some frozen salads that included canned pie fillings, and or sliced bananas and or minature marshmellows, about the size of gum drops. My sister and I finally persuaded her to include green salads as well, but not to drop the sweet ones. Other times, other manners.

    Entspinster

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  5. I'm a little surprised that you are unaware of the classical origins of this dish and its central importance to our shared cultural heritage.

    This toxic dish was given the name "Frozen Waldorf Salad" by Odysseus, so that he might disarm Polyphemus who, he reasoned, might be alarmed by hearing it more accurately described as "Frozen Waldorf Macedoine."
    As it turned out the trick did not work because the cyclops, who was used to eating his salad at the end of a meal, was full of men when the dish arrived.

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  6. The etymology for the word "salad" is Latin for salt, added to the dish. Custom makes it green, raw, leafy and/or composed...

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  7. Hello Bob - I hang my head in shame at my gross ignorance. I must hie me back to my Classical studies .... but what was Odysseus doing at the Waldorf anyway? It is hardly the place for a tough old seafarer adventurer. He mustnt have stayed to long, or he'd have gotten soft.

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