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Apple Ball Cocktail
Cut tops from stem end of 8 choice apples. Remove inside of apples with a French ball cutter, putting balls in 2 cups cold water with Juice of 1 lemon. Reserve tops of apples, cores, and small pieces for apple sauce. Put Apple shells in 1 quart cold water to which is added 1 teaspoon salt. Remove skins and seeds from 1/4 lb. (1 cup) white grapes. Just before serving drain apple shells. Remove apple balls from the water. Drain and mix with the White grapes and with 1/3 cup maraschino cherries and fill apple shells. Mix 3 tablespoons syrup from maraschino cherries with Juice of 1/2 orange and put over the apple balls. Serve apple shells in individual dishes or cocktail glasses surrounded with Crushed Ice.
Apple may be removed in small oval shapes with a coffee spoon, if a French ball cutter is not available. Grapes may be bought in cans if fresh grapes are not in market.
A first-course fruit cup served in the hollowed apple itself. Nothing here is difficult; the work is all in the cutting, and most of it can be done an hour ahead.
- French ball cutterThis is a melon baller; a scoop of any moderate size will do. The recipe's own fallback, a coffee spoon, produces the small oval shapes it mentions.
- Choose the apples for shape"Choice" here probably implies firm, unbruised fruit that will sit steadily in a dish. A crisp sweet-tart variety such as Honeycrisp, Braeburn or Gala scoops cleanly; mealy or very soft apples collapse as you work.
- The two soaking watersThe balls go into lemon water to stop browning, and the shells into salted water for the same reason. Both are ordinary practice, but drain and blot the shells or the salt carries through to the fruit.
- White grapes"White" means green table grapes. Modern seedless varieties need no seeding, and peeling is optional -- the recipe calls for it, but it adds nothing but labor now. Canned grapes, the recipe's substitute, are hard to find today; use fresh.
- Maraschino cherriesToday's are bleached, sugar-brined cherries dyed red, sweeter and softer than the marasca-based originals. Their syrup is the only sweetener in the dish, so taste before adding the full 3 tablespoons.
- Not an alcoholic drink"Cocktail" here means an opening course, not a mixed drink. There is no liquor in it and none is wanted; the orange juice and cherry syrup are the whole dressing.
- TimingThe apple balls hold in lemon water for a couple of hours, but assemble and dress only just before serving as the recipe insists -- once the syrup is on, the balls weep and the shells soften.
- YieldEight apples, so eight servings. The reserved tops, cores and trimmings are set aside for apple sauce, as the recipe directs.
Fruit cocktails opened countless American luncheons in the 1910s through the 1930s, and cookery writing of the period treated them as the safest possible first course: cold, pretty, made in advance, and requiring no carving at table. The borrowed word "cocktail" simply meant something small and sharp served first, which is why fruit cocktails, tomato cocktails and oyster cocktails all sat in the same place on a menu. The maraschino cherry and the canned white grape both mark the period exactly -- both were new industrial conveniences a home cook could rely on out of season -- and the French ball cutter reflects the era's fondness for gadgets that made ordinary fruit look professionally handled. Serving the fruit in its own hollowed shell on crushed ice belongs to the same impulse for presentation without expense.