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Olive Oil and Cream Fruit Dressing
Use equal quantity of oil and cream. (The evaporated, unsweetened cream will answer the purpose very nicely.) The oil must be added gradually to the cream and mixedshortly before serving or it will separate. Flavour this with maraschino, or some other liqueur, brandy, or cordial, and the oil is quite disguised.
A two-ingredient emulsion with no quantities attached — the proportions are yours to set, as long as the oil and cream are equal by volume. The whole thing hinges on how the oil goes in.
- Add the oil in a threadThis is a mayonnaise-style emulsion without egg, so it is fragile from the start. Pour the oil into the cream in a slow trickle while whisking constantly; dumping it in will give you a slick that never comes together.
- Make it at the last minuteThe recipe's warning is real. Without an egg yolk or mustard to hold it, the emulsion is unstable and will separate on standing, which is why the original says to mix it shortly before serving.
- Evaporated creamThe unsweetened evaporated cream named here is broadly comparable to what is sold as evaporated milk today. Modern evaporated milk is the closest stand-in; heavy cream is thicker and will give a different, richer result.
- Choose a mild oilA modern peppery extra-virgin will not be "disguised" by a spoonful of liqueur; use a mild or refined olive oil if you want the effect described.
- MaraschinoThis means the clear, dry cherry-pit liqueur, not the syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. Kirsch, Cointreau or a good brandy all substitute directly.
- Quantities to start fromThe original gives none. A quarter cup each of oil and cream with two teaspoons of liqueur makes about half a cup, enough to dress fruit for four.
- BalanceThere is no acid or salt in this at all, which is unusual for a dressing. A squeeze of lemon or a pinch of salt sharpens it considerably and also helps the emulsion, though it moves the recipe away from what is written.
Cream-and-oil dressings for fruit belong to a period in Anglo-American cookery when the fruit salad was being promoted as a refined course and cooks were looking for something to pour over it that was neither a plain sugar syrup nor a vinegary salad dressing. The apologetic tone here is telling: olive oil was still a slightly suspect ingredient in many English-speaking kitchens, associated with medicine and with foreign cooking, and the author's promise that a liqueur will leave it "quite disguised" says a good deal about how it was regarded. The evaporated cream is the other marker of date -- unsweetened canned milk was widely available and cheap by this period, and cookbook writers recommended it as a shelf-stable stand-in for fresh dairy.