When I first wrote about Marye Dahnke's Salad Book (1954), I examined Dahnke's tendency to assign salad recipes to seemingly-random cultures. I also presented some oddities, like a "salad" that consisted of a wad of ingredients rolled up in wax paper, stored in the fridge, and sliced off like refrigerated cookie dough. Today, we're going to look at another of Dahnke's fixations, this one because it is fall-appropriate. (Hooray for the six pounds of fresh Ginger Gold I just stored away in the crisper!) Dahnke liked putting apples in pretty much anything.
Remember the salads attributed to a seemingly-random culture that I just mentioned? The Mexicana Salad exhibits both that tendency and the obsession with apples.
Yes, nothing says "Mexicana" quite like a slab of vinegary gelatin full of celery, carrots, cabbage, pimentos, and apple-- especially if it's slathered with mayonnaise before serving.
If pasta salad is more your thing, but you don't like how soft the mixture tends to be, the book suggests Macaroni and Cabbage Salad.
You get the crunch of shredded cabbage and diced apple (along with the usual suspects for a macaroni salad). And if you're craving apples, pickles, cabbage, and mayo with your macaroni and cheese, you are a very different person from me...
If you really want to show off the cabbage-and-apple combo, the Buffet Cabbage Salad is served right out of the hollowed-out cabbage heads.
This time, the cabbage/apple/mayo/cheese combo gets enriched with olives instead of macaroni and pickle.
Finally, I am not even sure Dahnke was fully convinced of the combination in Kidney Bean Salad I. The headnote says kidney beans "are natural partners with celery, onion, and hard-cooked egg." You will notice that this description doesn't mention apples.
But apples are in there all the same. Maybe Dahnke realizes they are not such "natural partners" but throws them in anyway, just because she can't help herself? Or maybe she was bribed by USApple Association to throw them into extra recipes? (Or maybe she was bribed by some orange growers to sour readers on apples?)
Whatever the case, I'd recommend using Red "Delicious" apples in these recipes. They combinations don't sound good anyway, so there is no point in wasting an apple you'd actually want to eat in one of these salads. 😆
The last recipe has the added bonus of instructing the cook to use just enough mayonnaise or salad dressing to moisten the mixture. Those subjective instructions left to the maker's (or the reader's) interpretation. Do we decide that it's moist enough without it, or do we decide to lube it up well enough to go down the garage disposal or trash shute easily? Maybe reuse the oil used to fry fish in one of your previous blog posts to facilitate the disposal of a particularly nasty "salad".
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