Salads in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were quite different than today. Often they were just lettuce dressed with a simple yet flavorful French dressing made from vinegar and oil. Salads that did have a variety of ingredients mixed together were similar to what we consider a chopped salad today, such as Salade a la Russe (Russian Salad), an assortment of diced cooked vegetables and sometimes meats. In the nineteenth century, this type of dish would have been served during the cold dishes course, also referred to as the cold service, cold entrées, or cold meats.
 
Lettuce typically appeared as part of the vegetables course. On elaborate banqueting menus, special preparations of rare, early season, or out-of-season vegetables were featured as a light course toward the end of dinner, known as entremets de legumes. For example, the 1851 Thousand Dollar Dinner served by Philadelphia restaurateur James Parkinson features “dressed lettuce” as part of the Ninth Course - Pièces Montées and Vegetables. But on contemporary multicourse menus, these courses have been replaced by the salad section, most often some type of tossed salad featuring lettuce.
 
By the turn of the twentieth century, salads were becoming a more common feature on everyday menus. In fact, in the late 1890s, Philadelphia Cooking School instructor Sarah Tyson Rorer recommended that salad appear “on the table of every well-regulated household 365 times a year. Salad was nature’s lubricant; it purified the blood and cleared the complexion.” 

Mrs. Rorer was a well-known Philadelphia cooking instructor from the late 1870s through the early 20th century. After appearing at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, she became a household name and traveled the country to demonstrate cooking techniques to one packed auditorium after another. Many of these events were touted as “pure food fairs” by major food manufacturers as a way of advertising their products and indoctrinating American housewives to the newfangled products meant to make baking and cooking easier, such as baking powder, Baker’s chocolate and canned foods. By promoting and demonstrating their products, these companies also hoped to alleviate concerns about food adulteration scandals that were common at the time, such as cream of tartar cut with rice flour to make it stretch further.

Mrs. Rorer also published books, articles and testimonials to complement her lecture circuit, such as the one from 1914 I recently stumbled across entitled, “How We Serve Hawaiian Canned Pineapple,” produced by the Hawaiian Pineapple Packers’ Association. Along with Mrs. Rorer’s recipes, this little cookbook contained a treasure trove of other dishes from the top cooks of the day, including Fannie Farmer, Christine Terhune Herrick and Janet McKenzie Hill. One of Mrs. Rorer’s recipes was an interesting sounding "Honolulu Salad." Ironically I visited Hawaii recently and was feeling me nostalgic for these beautiful islands and their delicious foods, particularly the ubiquitous fresh pineapple, so I thought it was perfect to try.
 
It is very simple – just lettuce, pineapple dusted with red pepper and paprika and a homemade mayonnaise dressing. However, since the dressing called for raw egg yolks, I decided to make my own similar dressing with some pineapple juice, plain yogurt, mustard and red pepper.
​
Here's Mrs. Rorer's original recipe: