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Banana-and-Orange Salad
Juice of 1/2 lemon; juice of 2 oranges; 1/2 cupful of sugar; white of 1 egg; 1/2 cupful of pineapple juice.
Slice and mix in a bowl 4 oranges and 3 bananas. Heat to the boiling point juice of 1/2 lemon, 2 oranges, 1/2 cupful of sugar, and the white of 1 egg, and let simmer five minutes. Strain through muslin upon the fruit; add 1/2 cupful of pure pineapple juice. Put on ice to become chilled before serving.
A fruit salad dressed with a clarified citrus syrup rather than a mayonnaise or cream dressing. The egg white here is a clarifying agent, not a thickener: it coagulates, traps the pulp and cloud, and is left behind in the straining cloth.
- The hinge is the strainingOnce the white sets it must be lifted out cleanly, or the syrup will carry rags of cooked egg onto the fruit. Ladle the hot liquid through damp muslin or a double layer of cheesecloth without pressing or stirring it through.
- Ingredient list is doubledEvery dressing ingredient is named twice, once in the heading list and again in the method: lemon juice, orange juice, sugar, egg white and pineapple juice. Use each once: juice of half a lemon, juice of two oranges, half a cup of sugar, one egg white, half a cup of pineapple juice.
- CupfulAn American cup of this period is usually reckoned at about 8 fl oz, so half a cupful is roughly 4 fl oz of juice or syrup. Half a cup of granulated sugar is about 100 g.
- Pineapple juiceThe word "pure" may have been meant to distinguish it from the sweetened pineapple syrups sold at the time. Canned unsweetened juice works, as does fresh.
- Simmer timeFive minutes is enough to set the egg and reduce the syrup slightly. Longer will drive off the fresh citrus aroma that is the point of the dressing, so pull it as soon as the white has fully coagulated.
- Preparing the fruitPeel the oranges to the membrane and slice across into rounds, removing pith and seeds; bananas should be sliced last and mixed in just before the hot syrup goes over, since the acid checks browning but the flesh softens quickly.
- Chilling"Put on ice" means an hour or two in the refrigerator, covered. The syrup needs that time to draw juice from the oranges and thin down; served warm it tastes cloying.
- YieldFour oranges, three bananas and about a cup of syrup serves six as a salad course, or four as a dessert.