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Fruit Salad Dressing (T salt Juice orange Juice)
12 t salt Juice 1 orange Juice 1 lemon 2 eggs 1 T cornstarch ¾ C pineapple juice 1/4 C sugar Mix dry ingredients, add eggs slightly beaten and the juice from a can of pineapple with the strained orange and lemon juice. Cook in a double boiler until thickened. Serve plain or add whipped cream when cold.
Margaret Smock.
A cooked citrus-and-pineapple custard dressing of the kind that went over canned fruit in a lettuce cup. The typography has suffered in transcription, so read the quantities with care.
- The salt measurement"12 t salt" is almost certainly 1/2 teaspoon, with the fraction slash lost in transcription; twelve teaspoons of salt in this quantity of dressing would be inedible. The pineapple juice is 3/4 cup, as printed.
- AbbreviationsT is tablespoon, t is teaspoon, C is cup. So: 1 tablespoon cornstarch, 1/4 cup sugar, 3/4 cup pineapple juice, 2 eggs, and the juice of one orange and one lemon.
- Mix dry first, and mean itCornstarch, sugar and salt must be combined before any liquid goes in, or the starch will lump the moment it hits the acidic juice. Whisk the beaten eggs into the dry mix to a smooth paste, then add the juices gradually.
- Double boiler is not optionalEgg plus acid plus starch over direct heat will curdle and scorch. Keep the water below a hard boil and stir constantly; the dressing thickens to a soft custard in roughly 8 to 12 minutes and will coat a spoon.
- Cornstarch and acidCitrus juice weakens cornstarch's thickening power, and prolonged cooking weakens it further. Take the pan off the heat as soon as it thickens rather than holding it there.
- Pineapple juiceCanned juice is what the recipe assumes, and it is what you want here. Fresh pineapple contains bromelain, an enzyme that digests egg protein and will keep the dressing thin; canning heat destroys it.
- Cooling and the creamPress a sheet of plastic against the surface as it cools or a skin forms. Fold in whipped cream only once it is fully cold — perhaps 1/2 cup cream, whipped, to lighten it.
- YieldThe liquids alone come to close to a pint once the orange and lemon juice are added to the 3/4 cup of pineapple juice, so expect rather more than a cup and a half. Covered in the refrigerator it should hold a few days; the whipped-cream version is best used the same day.
Cooked dressings like this one belong to the era when a "fruit salad" meant canned pineapple, orange sections and maraschino cherries arranged on lettuce, and when a boiled dressing was often said to be more respectable — and cheaper — than a mayonnaise made with a cup of oil. Canned Hawaiian pineapple became widely available in American groceries in the first decades of the twentieth century, and church cookbooks of the period lean on it heavily; the juice, which would otherwise have gone down the drain, does double duty here as liquid and flavoring.