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Grape Fruit Salad
Cut three large grape fruit in halves crosswise, remove the pulp and keep in its original shape. Arrange in nests of white crisp lettuce heart leaves, dividing pulp in six portions. Strew one cup of English walnut meats, broken in fourths, over grape fruit. Marinate with French Dressing, but with less salt and using paprika in place of cayenne, and lemon and grape fruit juice in place of vinegar.
A straightforward citrus salad that depends entirely on how cleanly the grapefruit is sectioned. Everything else is assembly.
- "Keep in its original shape"The instruction is to lift the segments out whole, free of membrane, then reassemble them so each portion looks like an intact half. Cut the halves crosswise as directed, run a curved grapefruit knife around the outer wall and between each membrane wall, and lift the segments out in one piece each. This is the hinge of the dish; broken pulp makes it look like a fruit cup.
- Grapefruit then and nowEarly 1900s grapefruit was seedier and more bitter than modern Ruby Red or Star Ruby, both of which are later introductions. If you use a sweet red variety, lean on the paprika and lemon for balance.
- French dressing, 1900 senseNot the sweet orange bottled product. It means oil and acid whisked with salt and pepper; period proportions vary, running roughly two to three parts oil to one of acid. Here the acid is lemon and grapefruit juice, so the dressing is milder than a vinegar one and can take a slightly higher proportion of juice.
- Paprika for cayenneThe substitution is for colour and mildness, not heat. Use sweet Hungarian paprika, about a quarter teaspoon per half cup of dressing.
- English walnutsSimply the common walnut, as distinct from the American black walnut, which is far stronger and would overwhelm the citrus. Toast them lightly if you like; the recipe says nothing either way.
- Lettuce heart leavesThe pale inner leaves of iceberg or a firm butterhead. They need to be cold and dry or the dressing slides straight off; spin them and chill them before the grapefruit is cut.
- TimingSection the fruit no more than an hour ahead and dress at the table or immediately before serving. Grapefruit segments weep quickly and will flood the plate.
- YieldSix portions, one grapefruit half each, as the recipe states. As written it is a salad course rather than a first course with any weight to it.
Grapefruit was still something of a novelty on American tables when this book appeared. Commercial groves in Florida had only been planted in earnest from the 1880s, and for a couple of decades the fruit was a luxury item associated with hotel breakfasts and the fashionable salad course. That salad course is the real context here: between roughly 1890 and 1920 American cookbooks filled with elaborate fruit-and-nut salads on lettuce, served with a light oil-and-acid dressing, which were understood as light, modern and faintly health-conscious in a way that older mayonnaise-bound salads were not. The use of grapefruit and lemon juice in place of vinegar, and paprika in place of cayenne, is characteristic of that style — softening everything so nothing competes with the fruit.