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Frozen Fruit Salad
Beat 2/3 cup heavy cream until stiff, and gradually beat in 1/3 cup mayonnaise dressing 1 teaspoon gelatin soaked in 3 tablespoons pineapple syrup and dissolved over hot water 1 teaspoon powdered sugar 2 tablespoons lemon juice and 1 tablespoon maraschino syrup. Fold in 1/2 cup canned apricots, cut in small pieces 1 banana, cut lengthwise and crosswise in small pieces 3/4 cup pineapple, cut in dice 1/2 cup maraschino cherries, cut in slices. Freeze like ice cream. Remove with round ice cream scoop, and serve on Heart leaves of lettuce. Cut Maraschino cherries in 4 pieces lengthwise and put on top of each salad.
A frozen salad of the 1920s, built on sweetened whipped cream rather than a custard base. The one thing to get right is the gelatin: it must be fully dissolved and still warm-liquid when it goes into the cream, or it will set in threads.
- "Freeze like ice cream"In the original this means a hand-crank freezer packed with ice and rock salt. A loaf pan or shallow metal tin in the freezer works: cover the surface, freeze 4 hours or until firm enough to scoop, and stir once after the first hour to break up ice crystals. The whipped cream already carries air, so the mixture will scoop without churning.
- GelatinOne teaspoon is a little under half a modern 1/4-oz envelope. Soften it in the cold pineapple syrup for five minutes, then set the cup in hot water until clear, and beat it in while it is warm and pourable but not hot enough to slacken the cream.
- Mayonnaise dressingMayonnaise for salads of this kind was often thinner and sharper than modern jarred mayonnaise. Commercial mayonnaise works; a bland, sweetened salad dressing will flatten the whole thing. The lemon juice is what keeps a third of a cup of mayonnaise from reading as savoury.
- Maraschino syrupThe syrup from the jar of cherries, not a liqueur. It is sweet, so taste before adding the powdered sugar and consider leaving it out.
- Canned fruitDrain the apricots and pineapple well and blot them; excess syrup makes hard ice in the frozen mixture. Use canned pineapple rather than fresh, whose bromelain will attack the gelatin.
- BananaCut it last and fold it in immediately. It will brown in the bowl but not once frozen.
- Yield and servingAbout a quart, or six to eight scoops. Let it stand 5 minutes at room temperature before scooping, and serve at once on chilled lettuce; it softens quickly on the plate.
Frozen fruit salads had a long vogue in American entertaining from roughly the 1910s through the 1950s, and they belong to the moment when mechanical refrigeration and bottled mayonnaise reached the middle-class kitchen. The formula is characteristic: whipped cream and mayonnaise bound with a little gelatin, studded with drained canned fruit, frozen in a mould or crank freezer and served on lettuce as a salad course rather than a dessert. That distinction mattered to hostesses of the period, when a luncheon menu was expected to include a salad.