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Pineapple and Banana Salad
Use home-canned pineapple which has been cooked in the jars, or the market variety of pineapple which comes very slightly sweetened in large cans holding entire slices of the fruit. Cut the pineapple into small dice and drain away the juice. To one cup of pineapple dice add one cup of finely sliced banana and pour over a syrup flavored with Maraschino.
Serve in lemon cups.
A four-line fruit salad that assumes two things a modern reader may not: that Maraschino means a liqueur, and that a cook knows how to carve a lemon cup. Neither is difficult once stated.
- Maraschino means the liqueurIn this period Maraschino is the clear cherry-kernel liqueur from Dalmatia, not the pink syrup from a jar of dyed cherries. A teaspoon or two stirred into the syrup is enough; substituting cherry-jar syrup gives a sweeter, flatter result.
- The syrup is undefinedNo quantity or recipe is given. A simple syrup of equal parts sugar and water, boiled briefly and chilled, suits it; about a quarter cup for two cups of fruit dresses it without drowning it. Chill the syrup before it goes near the bananas.
- Canned pineapple today"Very slightly sweetened in large cans holding entire slices" describes pineapple in light syrup. Pineapple canned in juice is the closest current equivalent. Fresh pineapple also works and is better, but it is more acidic and more assertive than the tinned product the recipe expects.
- Drain thoroughlyThe instruction to drain away the juice is the hinge. Undrained pineapple liquid thins the syrup and turns the salad watery within minutes, and it accelerates the breakdown of the banana slices.
- Slice the banana lastCut banana browns quickly and softens faster still. Slice it directly into the drained pineapple, dress, and serve within fifteen or twenty minutes. The acid from the pineapple slows discoloration but does not stop it.
- Lemon cupsHalve large lemons crosswise, cut out the flesh and membrane with a grapefruit knife, and scallop or notch the rim if you like. Each half holds only two or three tablespoons, so they are a garnish-scale presentation; small glass dishes or hollowed orange halves hold a real portion.
- YieldTwo cups of dressed fruit serves about four as a light salad course; served in lemon cups, which hold only a few spoonfuls apiece, it will go further.
This belongs to the moment when canned pineapple stopped being a luxury and became a staple of the American fruit salad. Large-scale Hawaiian canning was established in the first years of the twentieth century, and by the time books like this one were compiled a cook could rely on evenly cut slices in light syrup at any grocer, year round. Bananas arrived on the same wave of improved shipping. The result is a dish that would have been impossible in a home kitchen a generation earlier and that reads, to us, as almost aggressively simple: two tropical fruits, a spoonful of syrup, and a European liqueur to signal that this is a company dish rather than a bowl of fruit. The lemon cup is period presentation of a kind common in salad chapters of the era, where the container did much of the work now done by plating.