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Lettuce, Peppergrass and Onion Salad
Separate the heart leaves of two solid heads of lettuce. Wash, drain and chill; arrange them in a nest in salad bowl. Sprinkle between and over leaves four tablespoons finely chopped peppergrass and small, thinly sliced onions, separating the rings. Marinate with French Dressing; chill and serve.
PEACH ICE CREAM No. 2 4 cups milk. 3 cups heavy cream. 1 cup sugar. 1 tablespoon lemon extract. 1/4 teaspoon salt. 2 cups fresh peach pulp.
PROCESS: Pare and pit peaches; stew until soft, rub through a sieve. Then mix ingredients in the order given. Add peach pulp and freeze. Let stand two hours before serving.
Two August dishes run together on one page: a simple garden salad and a peach ice cream sized for a crank freezer. Both need a little translation.
- PeppergrassThis is Lepidium sativum, the fast-growing garden cress once sown in every kitchen garden and cut young. Supermarket garden cress or the fine-leaved cress sold in punnets is the same plant; watercress is a different species but the nearest easy substitute, with a similar mustardy bite.
- French DressingIn a 1913 American book this means oil and vinegar, roughly three to one, with salt and pepper, whisked or shaken to combine. It is not the sweet orange bottled dressing that later took the name.
- Dress at the tableCress and thin onion rings wilt fast in acid. Assemble the nest, chill it, and add the dressing immediately before serving rather than chilling it in the marinade as written.
- Onions"Small onions" here means a mild spring or young white onion sliced paper-thin. A sweet onion or shallot works; a standard yellow onion raw will overwhelm the cress.
- Lemon extractA tablespoon of modern extract is far too assertive in a base this size. One to two teaspoons gives the lift the original was after, or use the grated zest of a lemon.
- Peach pulpTwo cups of sieved, stewed pulp takes roughly 2 lb of ripe peaches, six to eight medium fruit. Stewing softens the fruit so it sieves smoothly and drives off some water, which helps keep the pulp from freezing into shards.
- FreezingThe original assumes a bucket freezer packed with cracked ice and rock salt. In a modern churn, chill the base thoroughly first, then churn; the mixture is about 9 cups and will make over two quarts, more than most domestic machines take in one go, so split it.
- "Let stand two hours"This is ripening, not thawing. The packed can was left buried in ice and salt so the texture firmed and the peach flavour spread. Two hours in the freezer after churning does the same thing.
- SugarOne cup for nine cups of base is lean by current standards, and sugar controls hardness as much as sweetness. Expect a firm, icy set rather than a soft scoop, and let it sit a few minutes before serving.
52 Sunday Dinners (1913) was a menu book, which is why a salad and an ice cream sit shoulder to shoulder here with no transition. Peppergrass is the giveaway that this is a garden menu: cress germinates in days and was among the first and most reliable things an American household could cut, so it turns up constantly in nineteenth-century salads and almost never in modern ones. The peach ice cream belongs to the same seasonal logic. Before mechanical refrigeration, ice cream was most easily made in summer with a hand-cranked freezer, ice and rock salt — though stored ice from an ice house could serve at other times of year — which is why the recipe says simply "freeze" and then insists on the two-hour stand: the ripening period in the packed bucket was understood as part of the process rather than an afterthought.