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Waldorf salad: A summery, sweet treat

By ERIC STANWAY - Special to The Sunday Telegraph | Jul 4, 2020

Back in the 1960s, my mother used to attempt to liven up our nightly dinners with some kind of new concoction she found somewhere in a cookbook. My father, however, was a strict egg and chips man, who eyed all new gastronomic experiences with extreme suspicion. So it was that, one night, she tried her hand at a Waldorf Salad, a relatively simple combination of apples, grapes, celery and walnuts, in a mayonnaise dressing.

My father cast a baleful eye at the bowl. “What is this?” he growled.

“It’s a Waldorf Salad,” my mother replied. “Try it.”

That just wasn’t going to happen. “It should be,” he commented. “Walled off from the sight of humanity forever.”

His opinion notwithstanding, Waldorf Salad has proven extremely popular in the nearly 130 years since it made its debut. The Waldorf-Astoria hotel serves up about 20,000 of them every single year, and it’s one of their most popular items.

The Waldorf Salad made its first appearance on March 14, 1893, at a charity ball for Saint Mary’s Hospital for Children. This was a big deal for the swanky new hotel, which had just opened the previous day. Wanting to come up with something truly special, Edouard Beauchamp, the Waldorf’s original executive chef, and Oscar Tschirky, its maitre d’hotel, put their heads together and came up with something in the vein of a sweet salad, which were all the rage at the time. Actually, most people believe that Tschirky owns the credit for its invention, and the recipe appeared in his volume, “The Cook Book, The Cook Book, by ‘Oscar’ of the Waldorf,” which was published some three years later.

Tschirky was a Swiss immigrant who toiled throughout various hotels in New York City. He started out as a busboy at the Hoffman House, and then became a waiter at Delmonico’s. By the time he started working at the Waldorf, he was already a celebrated character in the city.

As with most dishes, Waldorf Salad has undergone some changes and modifications over the years. Walnuts began to appear at one point, and became an essential part of the recipe. Other variations include sour cream, dried sweetened cranberries, pecans, kiwi and mandarin orange segments. Even the Waldorf as altered its original mayonnaise dressing, replacing it with an emulsion of Dijon mustard, olive oil, Champagne vinegar, egg yolk and white truffle oil.

When Tschirky died in 1950, The New York Times praised his singular invention in its obituary. “People who have never stepped foot into the Waldor-Astoria owe Mr. Tschirky a debt,” they wrote.

The above recipe is the most simple and traditional. It’s easy, economical, and just the thing to have when the weather is stiflingly hot and humid.

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