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Fruit Salad Dressing (Tablespoonfuls of sugar No I I)
4 tablespoonfuls of sugar No. I 1 gill of sherry 1/2 teaspoonful of cinnamon 2 tablespoonfuls of Madeira Mix the sugar and cinnamon together, add the wine, and stir constantly until the sugar is dissolved.
An uncooked wine syrup for macerating cut fruit, from an era when fruit salad meant sugar and sherry rather than mayonnaise or whipped cream. The text has come through with some transcription damage worth sorting out first.
- The "No. I" in the sugar lineThe sugar line reads "4 tablespoonfuls of sugar No. I," followed separately by 1 gill of sherry; the printed page was checked and matches. "No. I" is a grade of sugar or a cross-reference to a numbered entry elsewhere in the book, not a separate ingredient.
- A gillHalf a cup, 4 fluid ounces. With the 2 tablespoons of Madeira that gives roughly 5 fl oz of wine to 4 tablespoons of sugar.
- The hingeNothing is heated, so the sugar has to go into solution by agitation alone. Granulated sugar in cold wine takes several minutes of steady stirring; superfine dissolves in under a minute and gives a cleaner, less gritty dressing.
- Cinnamon will not dissolveGround cinnamon suspends rather than dissolves and settles within minutes. Stir again immediately before pouring, or steep a piece of stick cinnamon in the wine for an hour and strain it out.
- Sherry and MadeiraBoth were common in American pantries in this period, and what was sold then was often sweeter than the dry styles common today. An amontillado or a medium Madeira such as Verdelho or Bual is probably closest to what the book assumed; a fino or Sercial will taste noticeably sharper against the fruit.
- Uncooked alcoholNone of the alcohol cooks off, so the finished dressing is potent and not suitable for children or anyone avoiding it. There is no substitution that preserves the point of the recipe.
- Yield and useRoughly two-thirds to three-quarters of a cup, which will dress several cups of prepared fruit. Pour over the cut fruit and chill before serving so the juices and syrup marry; peaches, melon, oranges, grapes and pineapple all suit it, bananas do not.
Cookery books of the later nineteenth century were written for households without reliable refrigeration, where the summer problem was serving something cool that required no fire in the range, and an uncooked wine dressing over cut fruit answered that neatly. What the period called a fruit salad often meant what the French called a mac fruit sliced into a bowl, sugared, and moistened with a fortified wine or a liqueur, served in glasses as a dessert rather than as a course at the start of a meal. Sherry and Madeira were among the ordinary American cooking wines of the day, kept in the sideboard and used in soups, sauces and sweets, and Madeira in particular had long been favoured in the eastern states, being fortified and thus better able to survive the sea voyage and summer heat than table wine. Cross-references to other numbered recipes are a common feature of these books, which numbered entries so a dressing could point back to a syrup or a prepared fruit without reprinting it.