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Fruit Salad Dressing (Tablespoonfuls of sugar 1 gill)
4 tablespoonfuls of sugar 1 gill of sherry No. 2 1 tablespoonful of maraschino 2 tablespoonfuls of champagne Mix all the ingredients together, and stir until the sugar is dissolved.
A macerating syrup rather than a dressing in the modern sense: three wines and sugar, poured over cut fruit and left to stand. The whole thing takes two minutes, so the only real decisions are what you pour in.
- A gillA gill is 4 fluid ounces (half a cup) in American measure; a British gill is 5 fluid ounces. The line calls for 1 gill of sherry.
- "Sherry No. 2"Almost certainly a cross-reference to a numbered entry elsewhere in the book rather than a grade you can buy. Read it as a decent medium or dry sherry — an amontillado works — rather than a cream sherry, which will push the sugar over the edge.
- MaraschinoThe clear cherry-kernel liqueur from the Dalmatian coast, not the syrup from a jar of dyed cocktail cherries. Luxardo or a comparable maraschino is what the recipe means; cherry brandy is sweeter and much heavier in colour.
- Two tablespoons of champagneAn awkward quantity that only makes sense in a household already opening a bottle at table. Any dry sparkling wine does the same job, and its contribution here is aroma rather than fizz, which will be gone within minutes.
- Dissolving the sugarGranulated sugar in cold wine is slow. Superfine (caster) sugar goes into solution much faster; ordinary granulated wants persistent stirring, and any grit left behind will settle in the bottom of the bowl.
- Yield and useRoughly two-thirds of a cup by the measures given. Pour over prepared fruit — peaches, melon, berries, orange sections — and chill briefly so the syrup draws juice out; left long, soft berries collapse.
- Uncooked alcoholNothing here is heated, so the wine and liqueur stay at full strength. Not a dish for children or anyone avoiding alcohol, and there is no version of it that isn't.
Fruit macerated in sweetened wine belongs to the summer table of a period when "salad" still covered anything dressed and served cold and a fruit course could be made respectable by the addition of sherry. Books of hot weather cookery multiplied in that period, and it is often said that urban kitchens with coal ranges were unbearable in July and August, so that dishes requiring no fire at all found a ready market. Maraschino, distilled from marasca cherries and their crushed stones around Zadar, reached English and American sideboards through the wine trade and was a common flavouring for fruit compotes and ices before its name was borrowed — permanently, and confusingly — by the brined and dyed cocktail cherry.