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Fruit and Nut Salad
1 cup strawberries cut into halves 1 cup pineapple cut into 1/4-inch dice 1/4 cup pecan meats sliced Juice of 1/4 lemon Maple sugar grated Put the fruit and nuts in layers in a glass dish, sprinkling each layer with the maple sugar, then pour the lemon juice over the top. Shredded cocoanut may be substituted for the pecans.
A macerated fruit salad rather than a dressed one: the sugar draws juice from the strawberries and pineapple and makes its own syrup. Assembly is the whole technique.
- Maple sugarHard cake maple sugar was grated like a nutmeg. Modern granulated maple sugar can be used straight from the bag, about 2 to 3 tablespoons total; maple syrup works but loosens the layers rather than drawing syrup from the fruit.
- Give it timeThe recipe gives no standing time, but the sugar needs some to work. Layered and sugared, then chilled 30 to 60 minutes, the fruit releases juice and the dish tastes finished. Served immediately it is just cut fruit with sugar on it.
- PineappleThe dice suggests fresh pineapple, which supplies the acid and body here. Canned pineapple in syrup will make the whole thing cloying; if you use it, drain well and cut the sugar.
- LemonThe juice of a quarter lemon is roughly 1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons. It is there to keep the strawberries bright and cut the sugar, not to dress the salad.
- PecansSliced pecan meats soften once they sit in the syrup. If you want them crisp, toast them lightly and scatter them over at the table instead of layering them in.
- CocoanutTake the substitute as unsweetened shredded coconut, fresh or packaged. Sweetened bagged flake changes the balance; reduce the maple sugar accordingly.
- YieldAbout two cups of fruit, serving three or four as a light salad course or dessert. Glass was specified so the layers show; a straight-sided tumbler or small bowl still does that.
Fruit and nut "salads" of this kind belong to a specific moment in American cooking, roughly 1890 to 1920, when the salad course was expanding well beyond greens and cooks were happy to call almost any arranged cold dish a salad. Maple sugar rather than white sugar is the telling detail: sold in pressed cakes and grated as needed, it was a standard northeastern pantry sweetener, and books of this period call for it grated over fruit, cereal and puddings much as later cooks would reach for brown sugar. The alternative of shredded coconut reflects the other half of the pantry, the tropical imports that steamship trade had recently made ordinary in northern kitchens, so that fresh pineapple and coconut could sit in the same dish as local strawberries and pecans without comment.