The Iconic Waldorf Salad Gets an Upgrade With This One Easy Trick

Cold, crunchy, and delightfully sweet, Waldorf salad is a true American culinary icon. This combination of apples, celery, grapes, and walnuts tossed with a creamy mayonnaise dressing was created at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in 1893 by Oscar Tschirky—the storied, original maître d'hôtel. While his original recipe, found in his cookbook, The Cookbook by Oscar of the Waldorf, only featured three ingredients: apples, celery, and mayonnaise (no walnuts or grapes to be found), countless iterations have been created in American restaurant and home kitchens since the salad's inception. 

It’s become a staple special-occasion salad, making appearances on many Thanksgiving tables over the years, and falls into that category of fruit salads like ambrosia or grape salad, that are bursting with retro Americana appeal—you can easily picture it out on the buffet line at a Sunday cookout or on a holiday table back in the 1950s.

The salad is simple to prepare yet satisfying, with a delightful balance of sweet and savory flavors and crunchy and creamy textures. It's also refreshing and light enough to pair with a variety of other dishes. But early opinions on the dish weren’t unanimously positive. The New Yorker's food editor at the time of the salad's creation and early popularity, Sheila Hibben, was vocal in her disapproval, stating that Tschirky’s combination of apples and mayonnaise “bred the sorry mixture of sweet salads" and steered the American housewife in the wrong culinary direction.

Hibben was not wrong in her assessment of many Waldorfs—iterations of this salad can be cloyingly sweet, overly dressed, slimy, or soggy. But the version below created by our test kitchen colleague Julia Levy steers clear of all those pitfalls. It includes the now-classic combination of apples, grapes, celery, and walnuts with a creamy dressing—because we saw no reason to mess with tradition in the basic ingredients—but it employs a few clever techniques and ingredient tweaks to make it even fresher tasting and more satisfying. No limp produce or overly sweet dressing here! The combination is crisp on crisp on crisp, yet silky smooth at the same time. Here’s how to perfect it at home.

The 3 Keys for the Very Best Waldorf Salad

True to the ever evolving spirit of the Waldorf, we’ve given our own spin on the salad. Here's how we tweaked the classic to make it even better. 

1. Put a little pickle in it. A major problem with many Waldorf salads is that they're too sweet to enjoy as a side salad with savory dishes. For a Waldorf salad to be great, it needs to have the right balance of savory and sweet, which can be challenging since the mixture consists mostly of fruit. Julia’s solution—which was inspired by a trick in Daniel's beet and wheat berry salad—was pickling the apples in a simple vinegar brine to tame their sweetness with a welcome kick of tartness. The salted apple cider vinegar brine not only gives the apples a piquant flavor, it also preserves their crisp texture and prevents them from oxidizing and turning mushy and brown, extending the salad’s lifespan and making any leftovers much more pleasant to eat. And while the apples only have to pickle for an hour, they can also sit in the pickling solution for up to two weeks, which means you can take care of this step in advance if you'd like, making the salad even faster to assemble the day you want to serve it. 

2. Get tangy with the dressing. While the original dressing was just mayonnaise, we wanted a tangier, more acidic, bright dressing to balance the sweetness of the grapes and apples and the richness of the walnuts. We landed on an equal parts combination of mayonnaise and Greek-style strained yogurt along with a splash of the reserved vinegar brine (from pickling the apples) to achieve the ideal tart coating we wanted for the fruit. You can also swap the yogurt for sour cream. Folding in just two tablespoons of fresh chives adds a pop of vibrant green color and more importantly, a savory backbone to balance the sweet fruit.

3. Go heavy on crunchy walnuts. While a scant scattering of toasted nuts might suffice in most salads, that is decidedly not the case here. Using a full cup of chopped toasted walnuts ensures that this salad is crunchy, plus their buttery, rich flavor pairs well with the fruit and dressing.

Fun Ways to Serve Waldorf Salad

If you’re going to make Waldorf salad, I suggest you lean all the way in, and have fun with its presentation. Stick with the retro vibe and serve the whole salad over a bed of frilly fresh lettuce or portion it into adorable individual lettuce cups. Glam it up in martini or coupe glasses or simply dig out a vintage bowl from your grandmother's collection. This salad is sure to be a conversation starter at the Thanksgiving buffet or dinner table.