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Cranberry Salad (C cranberries uncooked oranges)
2 C cranberries, uncooked 2 oranges ¼ orange peel Grind all together very fine and add 2 C sugar. Let stand over night. Dissolve 1 pkg. lemon jello in 1 C hot water, let cool and add above mixture with 2 apples chopped fine (with skins). Pour into molds. Serve on lettuce with salad dressing. 1 qt. cranberries 4 bananas
A congealed relish-salad of the church-supper type: raw ground cranberries and oranges sweetened overnight, then set with lemon gelatin. The transcription carries a couple of typographic oddities worth sorting out before you start.
- "14 orange peel"Probably a mangled fraction, most likely 1/4 orange peel — part of the peel from the oranges, ground in with the fruit for bitterness and aroma.
- The trailing line"1 qt. cranberries 4 bananas" appears to be a stray fragment, the opening of another recipe or a leftover line, and does not belong to this one. Ignore it.
- GrindingA food chopper or meat grinder on its fine plate was the intended tool. A food processor works, but pulse rather than run it — cranberries turn to purée in seconds and you want visible texture.
- The overnight standNot optional. The sugar draws juice from the raw cranberries and softens the peel; skipping it leaves the fruit sharp and the peel tough. Refrigerate, covered.
- Jello package sizeA package of lemon gelatin now runs 3 oz (about 85 g). One cup of hot water plus the syrupy fruit mixture is the full liquid here — do not add the second cup of cold water the box directions call for, or it will not set.
- Molds and unmoldingIndividual molds set in 3 to 4 hours; a single 1-quart mold needs 6 hours or overnight. Oil the molds lightly, then dip briefly in warm water to release.
- Salad dressingIn a community cookbook of this kind this means boiled dressing or a Miracle Whip-style dressing, not vinaigrette. Mayonnaise thinned with a little cream is the closest modern stand-in.
- YieldServes about 8 as a relish alongside poultry or pork.
Cranberry salads set in flavored gelatin became fixtures of American holiday tables once packaged gelatin was cheap and reliable — Jell-O was widely marketed from the turn of the twentieth century, and by the 1920s and 30s manufacturers were pushing savory and fruit-relish uses as hard as desserts. The compilers seem to have understood this one as a tart accompaniment to meat, the job cranberry sauce had always done. The uncooked cranberry, ground raw with orange and peel, is the older idea here — a relish generally associated with the twentieth century and the spread of the food chopper — and the gelatin is simply the modern convenience laid over it. Community cookbooks like this one, sold to raise funds for a congregation, are a valuable record of how quickly such packaged shortcuts entered ordinary home cooking, since the recipes come from members' own kitchens rather than from a test kitchen or a brand.