Atlas of the Unexpected by Travis Elborough

Author:Travis Elborough
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: White Lion 1
Published: 2018-12-07T16:00:00+00:00

Perched on its hill above the Thar Desert, Jaisalmer is one of the world’s few remaining inhabited fortress cities.

JUST ROOM ENOUGH ISLAND

USA

St Lawrence River, New York

44° 20' 33.4" N 75° 55' 29.4" W

What do the words ‘thousand island’ bring to mind? A dressing, most likely. One usually made from mix of mayonnaise, ketchup and pickles and herbs, pre-packed bottles of which sit pink and bitty, and congealing slightly in chill cabinets the world over. But the namesake of this gloopy salad topper, is a real place. As it happens, the Thousand Islands, at 1,864 in total, are closer to 2,000 and squat in the St Lawrence River between New York and Canada.’.

At the turn of the twentieth century, this upper New York state archipelago, just 595 km (370 miles) north of Manhattan, came into vogue as a secluded summering spot for the millionaire industrialists of America’s Gilded Age. Railway mogul George Pullman, the Kellogg family of breakfast cereal fame and George Boldt, owner of the Waldorf Astoria hotel, all had properties here. Boldt liked the place so much he had two holiday homes, one on Wellesley Island and the other on the heart-shaped Hart (later Heart) Island. On the latter, he wasted no expense building a mansion styled after a Rhineland castle for his wife, with a heart motif incorporated into its architectural detailing. Sadly Mrs Boldt died in 1904, calling a halt to construction and Boldt was never to visit the island again.

According to one story, the Boldts were partially responsible for the invention and subsequent popularity of thousand island dressing. One fine morning, the couple were out cruising on their steam yacht on the St Lawrence Seaway. As lunchtime approached, the Boldt’s chef discovered that the onboard kitchen lacked the ingredients necessary for dressing the couple’s prerequisite salad. (Fresh greens themselves were then undergoing a boom among the East Coast moneyed, who forked out for pricey iceberg lettuce, freighted in from California on newly refrigerated train cars.) He opted to improvise using the condiments to hand, adding a diced boiled egg for good measure. Having delighted the Boldts, the resulting mayonnaise-based concoction found its way onto the Waldorf Astroria’s menu as ‘thousand island dressing’, taking salads by storm the world over.

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