Amelia Summerville
AMBROSIA
(Food for the Gods) Have attractive-looking salad bowl-glass.
Have twelve large juicy oranges ready. One box strawberries. One pineapple (fresh or large can Hawaiian sliced pineapple). One box stoned black cherries.
Slice six of the oranges, removing seeds and rind, place a layer in the bowl, then a layer of strawberries, then a layer of pineapple, cut in small pieces, then a layer of cherries. Keep alternating layers of fruit until the bowl is filled. Take remaining six oranges and squeeze juice over contents of bowl.
A few maraschino cherries may be scattered over top of fruit. Place away in ice box three hours before serving.
This is the most delicious dessert imaginable. It is rightly named "Food for the Gods." Serve in large berry dishes. A little light cake (no icing), such as angel or plain pound, or sweet biscuits may be served with it. melind Summerlle
A layered macerated fruit bowl rather than the coconut-heavy ambrosia most American cooks know. The only technique here is the maceration, so the fruit has to be worth eating on its own.
- What a "box" meansA box of strawberries in period grocery terms is generally a quart basket, something over a pound. The box of cherries is the same measure, a quart before pitting; "stoned" simply means pitted.
- Fruit quantity and bowl sizeTwelve oranges, a quart each of berries and cherries and a whole pineapple fill a large glass bowl and serve eight to ten. Halve everything for a household of four, since the fruit does not keep well once cut and dressed.
- Slice the oranges properly"Removing seeds and rind" means taking off the peel and the white pith with it, then slicing crosswise or freeing the segments from the membrane. Pith left on turns bitter as the juice sits.
- Ice box, three hoursAn ice box ran warmer than a modern refrigerator, so the recipe's three hours is a generous chill. Three hours in a modern fridge works; the strawberries soften if it sits much longer.
- Fresh pineapple and gelatinFresh pineapple contains bromelain, which prevents gelatin from setting; canned pineapple has been heated and the enzyme destroyed. Either works here, since nothing in this dish is set.
- Canned pineapple then and now"Large can Hawaiian sliced pineapple" would have been packed in syrup. A modern 20 oz can in juice is the closer match; drain it, or the bowl turns sugary and thin.
- CherriesSweet dark cherries such as Bing are what is wanted here. Sour or maraschino cherries in bulk would overwhelm the oranges; the maraschinos are meant only as scattered decoration.
- Serving"Large berry dishes" are the individual glass dishes used for serving berries. Spoon the fruit and its juice together and pass a plain cake with no icing, as directed, so nothing competes with the citrus.
Ambrosia is a Southern American dessert that turns up in printed cookbooks from the 1860s and 1870s, usually as little more than sliced oranges layered with sugar and grated coconut, the whole thing named for the food of the Greek gods. Amelia Summerville's version drops the coconut entirely in favor of pineapple, strawberries and cherries, which says something about the period: canned Hawaiian pineapple was a national grocery item by the 1910s, and out-of-season fruit made a bowl like this a piece of quiet extravagance. Summerville was a comic actress and singer who also wrote a popular reducing book, Why Be Fat?, which makes a fruit dessert served with unfrosted cake a fitting contribution to a volume of stage-folk recipes. The page ends with a facsimile signature, garbled here in transcription.