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French Fruit Salad
2 oranges 3 bananas 1/2 lb. Malaga grapes 12 English walnut meats 1 head lettuce French Dressing Peel oranges, and remove pulp separately from each section. Peel bananas, and cut in one-fourth inch slices. Remove skins and seeds from grapes. Break walnut meats in pieces. Mix prepared ingredients and arrange on lettuce leaves. Serve with French Dressing.
A plain composed fruit salad of the sort that filled the salad chapter of American cookbooks around 1900. Nothing here is difficult; the work is all in the preparation of the fruit.
- Orange sections"Remove pulp separately from each section" means supreming: cut away peel and white pith, then free each segment from its membrane with a small sharp knife. Working over a bowl saves the juice, which can go into the dressing.
- Malaga grapesA large, firm, seeded green table grape, now uncommon in supermarkets. Any large seedless green grape works and skips the skinning and seeding entirely; halve them lengthwise so they do not roll off the lettuce.
- English walnutsSimply the common walnut, as distinguished from the black walnut then still gathered in America. Toast them briefly if you like, but the original intends them raw.
- French DressingIn this period that means oil and vinegar with salt and pepper, whisked or shaken; period proportions vary, commonly somewhere between two and three parts oil to one of vinegar. It is not the sweet orange-colored bottled dressing sold under that name today. Lemon juice in place of vinegar suits fruit better.
- BananasSlice them last and dress the salad promptly; cut banana browns within minutes. A little of the reserved orange or lemon juice tossed through slows it.
- Lettuce"A head of lettuce" in 1900 would more often have been a soft butterhead or leaf type than the crisphead iceberg familiar today. Use whole cupped leaves as a bed rather than shredding.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; the quantities suggest roughly four to six as a side salad. Assemble on individual plates rather than one platter if it must wait even a short time.