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Fruit Salad (Medium can pineapple can)
1 medium can pineapple 1 can peaches ½ lb. marshmallow cut in pieces 1/2 C blanched almond meats 1/2 pt. whipping cream Mix the fruit, marshmallow and nuts. Whip cream and add. Serve on lettuce leaf.
Linna Corlett.
A church-supper fruit salad of the canned-and-cream school, where "salad" means something sweet served on a lettuce leaf. Almost nothing here needs cooking, but several of the quantities need translating.
- Drain the fruit wellCanned pineapple and peaches came packed in syrup, and undrained juice will thin the whipped cream into soup. Drain both in a sieve and blot the peaches before slicing.
- What a "medium can" held"medium can" most likely meant a No. 2 can, roughly 20 oz or 2½ cups. Two modern 20-oz cans, one pineapple chunk or tidbit and one sliced peaches cut down, comes out about right.
- The marshmallow quantity is suspect1½ lb of marshmallow against about 5 cups of fruit is an enormous proportion, and the original gives no clue whether it is a misprint for ½ lb. Half a pound, about 4 cups of miniature marshmallows, gives a balanced salad; scale up only if you want a confection.
- Cutting marshmallowsMarshmallows of the period were sold in large squares and had to be cut up, often with scissors dipped in cold water or dusted with powdered sugar so they would not stick. Miniature marshmallows replace them directly and need no cutting.
- Blanched almond meats"Meats" simply means the kernels. Blanched whole almonds are still sold; slice or coarsely chop them, and toasting them lightly gives flavor the original would not have had, since the almonds here go in raw.
- The creamHalf a pint is one cup of heavy cream, which whips to about two cups. Whip it to soft peaks only, unsweetened, since the fruit syrup clinging to the fruit and the marshmallows carry plenty of sugar.
- The step that makes it workMix it and refrigerate at least four hours, preferably overnight. The marshmallows need that time to soften and partly dissolve into the cream, which is what turns a bowl of fruit and candy into a single dressing-bound salad.
- Yield and serviceServes eight to ten as a side salad. Spoon onto a crisp lettuce leaf on a chilled plate; the leaf is structural as much as anything, keeping the mound from sliding.
Marshmallow fruit salad belongs to the era when commercially canned pineapple and cheap marshmallows arrived in the Midwestern pantry at once, and a "salad" could mean anything served cold on lettuce. Its placement here under Pickles-Relishes is probably not a filing error: sweet fruit compositions seem to have been treated as relishes, side dishes to cut a plate of roast meat and scalloped potatoes, the same slot a spiced peach or a pickled crabapple would fill. Similar formulas are often said to have circulated for decades under names like Millionaire Salad and Heavenly Hash, their proportions drifting with whatever the cook had on hand, which may be how this version came to call for a pound and a half of marshmallow. Community cookbooks such as this one, sold to raise money for the church, tend to preserve recipes much as a member wrote them out, contributor's name attached, typos and all.