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Fruit and Almond Cocktails
Dice any desired fresh fruit, chill, put into champagne glasses and sprinkle the fruit thickly with blanched almonds, shredded.
A fruit cup dressed up as a cocktail — the whole thing rests on temperature and on cutting the fruit small enough to eat with a spoon from a narrow glass.
- The hinge: chill everythingServe-cold is the entire point of the dish, and there is no cooking step to hide behind. Dice the fruit, cover, and refrigerate at least an hour; chill the glasses too, and add the almonds only at the table so they stay crisp.
- "Champagne glasses"The glass likely meant is the wide shallow coupe rather than the modern flute, which is nearly impossible to eat diced fruit out of. Any small stemmed glass will do; fill it short of the rim to leave room for the almonds.
- Blanching almondsPour boiling water over shelled almonds, let stand a minute, drain, and the brown skins slip off between finger and thumb. Slice them lengthwise while still damp and soft; dry almonds shatter rather than shred.
- A shortcut that worksPackaged blanched slivered almonds are the same thing. Toast them dry in a skillet for a few minutes if you want more flavor, and cool them completely before they touch the fruit.
- Choosing the fruit"any desired fresh fruit" needs an edit for texture: melon, pineapple, orange and grape sections, pear, peach, berries. Bananas and very soft berries go to mush and cloud the juice that collects in the glass.
- BrowningApple, pear, peach and banana will oxidize in the hour of chilling. A spoonful of lemon or lime juice tossed through the bowl fixes that and sharpens the whole thing, which is otherwise flat.
- ServingFruit cocktails of this kind were usually offered as an opening course rather than a dessert, with a small spoon. A spoonful of fruit juice or ginger ale in each glass is a common variation, though this recipe calls for none.
Cold "cocktails" of fruit, tomato, oyster or shellfish served in a stemmed glass at the start of a meal were a fixture of American menus in the early twentieth century, and the fashion was at its height in the 1920s and 1930s. The almonds do the work a cracker or garnish would do elsewhere, adding crunch and a little richness to fruit alone, and blanching them by hand was ordinary kitchen labor before pre-slivered nuts were sold by the bag.