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Salad, Fruit
Currants, strawberries, raspberries, peaches, apricots, plums, oranges, pineapples, etc., may all be served as salads. The large fruit should be pared and sliced, the small fruit picked and arranged in a dish. Powdered sugar should then be sifted thickly over, together with a table-spoonful or two of spirit or any suitable liquor.
A method rather than a formula: fruit, sugar, and a splash of spirit, left to draw its own syrup. The proportions are left to the cook, so a few benchmarks help.
- QuantitiesReckon roughly 4-6 oz of prepared fruit per person, with 1-2 tablespoons of sugar per pound of fruit. Very tart currants or plums want the upper end; ripe strawberries and peaches often want less than you expect.
- "Powdered sugar"In Victorian and Edwardian English this means sugar ground fine, usually from a loaf or lump, not the cornflour-cut confectioners' sugar sold under that name in the United States. Caster sugar is the nearest equivalent; ordinary granulated dissolves eventually but leaves a gritty first hour.
- The spiritA tablespoon or two of brandy, kirsch, maraschino, or a sweet fortified wine. Its job is aromatic, not preservative — more than about 3 tablespoons for four servings and the fruit tastes of alcohol rather than of itself.
- Macerating timeThe recipe gives no standing time, but the sugar needs time to draw juice. Thirty to sixty minutes at cool room temperature gives a light syrup; much beyond two hours, berries collapse and stone fruit goes flabby.
- Order of assemblySugar firm fruit (pineapple, peach, plum, orange) first and let it stand, then fold in raspberries and strawberries near the end. Mixed together from the start, the soft fruit dissolves into the syrup.
- Pared and sliced"pared" means peeled. Oranges are pleasanter cut into segments free of membrane, and pineapple wants the fibrous core removed.
- BrowningPeaches, apricots, and pears discolour once cut. A squeeze of lemon or orange juice over them before the sugar goes on keeps the dish looking as intended, and adds acid that most all-sweet fruit mixtures need.
- ServingServe cold but not ice-cold — heavy chilling mutes the perfume of raspberries and pineapple. A chilled bowl and twenty minutes in the refrigerator is enough.
Fruit served raw, sugared, and spirited was a standing item of the late-Victorian dessert course, sitting between the compote (cooked in syrup) and the plain dish of fruit set out with the dessert plates. The entry places it among general principles rather than giving a fixed recipe because the point was seasonal: whatever the kitchen garden or the fruiterer offered that week. The reliance on a spoonful of liqueur reflects a period when brandy, maraschino, and kirsch were staples of the store cupboard, used as much for scenting sweets as for drinking.