ISSUE 36, PICNIC, Part 5: Salads
Picnic Salads
Tupperware appeared in our house shortly after 1960, no doubt as a result of a neighborhood tupperware party. The plastic containers wither the burp closures and tidy plastic components appealed to housekeepers on a fundamental level. There was a lot of tupperware in my house growing up. It became an important adjunt to family picnics, the containers that kept wet salads from becoming unruly.
Three salads became regular offerings at the picnics of the 1960s: tomato & onion, cucumber and sour cream, and lobster. The first was a wet salad. It went back into the 19th century in my mothere’s family. Her recipe help a formula used by her grandparents in their eperiments. Here is the recipe, employing Bermuda Onions and Beefsteak Tomatoes that became a picnic staple:
There was a peculiar agitation among certain Americans about eating raw vegetables in the 19th and early 20th century. Persons worried that raw vegetables would fill the gastri system with gas and crude fiber. Dyspepsia was the fear. So those vegetables most often consumered raw—and let’s face it, cucumbers stood high on the list—had to be thought through carefully. By the mid-19th century people connected with the culinary profession knew that acids ould “cook” items. The buttermilke biscuit had alerted culinarians that lactic acid would work similar wonders to acetic acid. Cukes in sour cream with a fresh herb adjuncture became something of a staple. Recipes appeared in some numbers at the beginning of the 20th century. The form of lactic acid was the point of contovery. Some used yoghurt. Some lemon juice and sour cream. The herbs in the mix mattered with dill, mint, and tarragon most popular.
The most impressive of the tupperware salads was lobster. The recipes were ancient, dating to the 1850s. Mrs. Ellet who did the following was the first lady of the College of South Carolina (now USC during the 1850s) and got her sense of dining from her time in SC. https://books.google.com/books?id=0otCAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA205&dq=lobster+salad&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Fh-eVNYqw6uDBLiJgfgP&ved=0CCEQ6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q=lobster%20salad&f=false
As usual Jessup Whitehead, the 19th century resort restaurateur and cookbook author, has something interesting to say about the place of Lobster salad in the scheme of things—the visual aesthetics of food.
This Virginia recipe is the way home cooks probably made it in Charleston: https://books.google.com/books?id=ZxUEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA192&dq=lobster+salad&hl=en&sa=X&ei=jSCeVNuHBpPmgwSNn4HYBg&ved=0CEMQ6AEwBzhG#v=onepage&q=lobster%20salad&f=false