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Cherry Salad
Stone ripe, sweet cherries and place in the heart of each a nut-preferably hazel. Serve on lettuce with mayonnaise or with a cream or other dressing flavoured well with Maraschino. (See Introductory Recipes.)
A brief salad of the type that filled American and British fruit-cookery books in the early twentieth century. Almost all of the work is in the pitting and stuffing, and the dressing decides whether it reads as a salad or a dessert.
- Pit without splittingA hand cherry pitter pushes the stone out through the stem end and leaves the fruit whole enough to hold a nut. Sweet varieties with firm flesh — Bing, Lapins, Rainier — hold their shape; soft sour cherries collapse.
- "Hazel" nutsHazelnuts, i.e. filberts. Whole blanched hazelnuts are usually larger than a cherry cavity; toast them at 350F for 8-10 minutes, rub off the skins and halve them so each half seats cleanly.
- Maraschino here is the liqueurA clear liqueur from Dalmatia, distilled from marasca cherries and their stones, not the syrup from a jar of bright red cocktail cherries. A teaspoon or two per half-cup of dressing is enough; more and the cream tastes medicinal.
- "Cream dressing"In books of this period the term often covers a boiled or cooked salad dressing thinned with cream, or whipped cream folded into mayonnaise, rather than plain pouring cream. Equal parts mayonnaise and lightly whipped cream is one common modern reading.
- Mayonnaise on fruitThe pairing was standard then and startles now. If you would rather not, a sweetened crème fraîche or thick yoghurt with the maraschino works with the same textures.
- LettuceUse a cupped, crisp leaf — Little Gem or the inner heart of a butterhead — so the cherries do not roll. Chill the leaves and assemble at the last minute, since the fruit weeps once stoned.
- YieldThe original gives none. Reckon 8-10 stuffed cherries per person as a first course or side salad; about 1 lb of cherries serves four.
Stuffed-fruit salads dressed with mayonnaise belong to a particular moment in Anglo-American cookery, roughly 1890 to 1930, when the salad course expanded well past greens and fruit combinations were regarded as a light, faintly luxurious way to open or close a meal. Maraschino, distilled in Zadar on the Dalmatian coast from marasca cherries and their crushed stones, was a fashionable flavouring for desserts and fruit throughout the period. The direction to see "Introductory Recipes" is characteristic of books arranged this way: the base mayonnaise, boiled dressing and cream dressing are given once at the front, and the individual entries then amount to little more than an assembly note.