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Fruit Salad Dressing (Jeanne S Burridge C pineapple)
Jeanne S. Burridge. 14 C pineapple juice 14 C orange juice 14 C lemon juice 2 eggs ½ C sugar 1/2 C whipping cream Heat juice in double boiler. Beat eggs very lightly. Gradually add sugar. Stir eggs into juice. Cook like custard. Let it set until cool. Add cream when ready to serve.
A cooked citrus custard dressing for fruit salad, of the kind that filled church cookbooks in the mid-twentieth century. The transcription carries a few typographic scars worth sorting out before you start.
- "14 C" means ¼ cup"14 C" is a dropped fraction -- The fraction character has been lost in transcription. It is most likely ¼ cup of each juice (¾ cup in all), though "1¼ C" each is also possible, and that larger reading would square better with the 1½ cups of sugar and ½ cup of cream. Decide which before you start.
- The sugar is questionableThe sugar depends on how you read the juice -- Against only ¾ cup of juice, 1½ cups of sugar is very sweet and will soften the set; against 3¾ cups it is ordinary. If you take the smaller reading of the juice, start with less sugar and taste against the tartness of your lemons.
- Cook it to a temperature, not a clock"Cook like custard" means stirring constantly over barely simmering water until the mixture coats the back of a spoon and reads 170–175F. Eggs in an acidic mixture set at a lower temperature than in plain milk, so it will thicken sooner than you expect.
- Temper the eggsThe instruction to stir beaten eggs into hot juice invites scrambling. Whisk a ladleful of the hot juice into the eggs first, then return the lot to the double boiler.
- Acid and the double boilerThe double boiler is not fussiness — direct heat plus this much citrus acid will curdle the eggs quickly. Use a glass or stainless bowl; aluminium will pick up a metallic taste from the lemon.
- The cream is whippedThe cream goes in last -- "Add cream when ready to serve" leaves it open whether the cream is whipped or poured in as liquid; since it is specified as whipping cream, folding it in at soft peaks is the likely intention. If you whip it, fold within an hour of serving, as it deflates and weeps on standing.
- Cooling and storagePress plastic wrap to the surface while it cools to stop a skin forming. The custard base keeps three or four days refrigerated; once the cream is folded in, use it the same day.
Cooked dressings like this one belong to a long American line of "boiled dressings" -- egg-and-vinegar or egg-and-citrus sauces thickened over water, which predated commercial mayonnaise and went on being made at home long after it was on sale. The fruit-salad version was a fixture of ladies' luncheons and church suppers, spooned over sectioned oranges and pineapple and folded with whipped cream.