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Melba Salad
1 large can halved peaches 1 C chopped celery Mrs. Arthur Meyers. 1/2 C mayonnaise 2 large or 3 small bananas In crisp lettuce cups place a half peach. Fill center with celery and mayonnaise mixed together. Around each peach arrange thin slices of bananas. Top off each peach with a t of raspberry jam.
A composed fruit salad of the canned-peach era, assembled rather than cooked. Nothing here is difficult; the whole dish rests on drainage and timing.
- Drain the peaches hardA large can holds syrup enough to thin the mayonnaise into soup and wilt the lettuce. Drain the halves cut side down on paper towels for ten minutes, and chill them before filling.
- Can sizes"1 large can" is not a standard designation; in cookbooks of this period it most often points to something in the No. 2 1/2 range (roughly 28-29 oz), which would give somewhere around six to ten peach halves. The original states no yield, so plan by the number of halves in the can you actually open.
- AbbreviationsC is cup, t is teaspoon (a capital T would mean tablespoon). So a level teaspoon of jam on each peach, not a spoonful heaped.
- The mayonnaiseThe recipe calls for mayonnaise, though bottled sweet salad dressing was a common substitute on salad plates of this kind. Either works; real mayonnaise gives a sharper, less dessert-like result against the jam.
- Slice the bananas lastCut them close to serving. Left standing they discolour and soften; a brief toss in lemon juice slows the browning but does the texture no favours.
- Lettuce cupsThe recipe says only "crisp lettuce." Iceberg suits the job, its cupped inner leaves holding their shape and staying cold; core the head and run cold water into the cavity to loosen whole leaves without tearing.
- Assembly orderCelery-and-mayonnaise into the peach, bananas around it, jam on top at the last moment so the colour stays bright rather than bleeding into the dressing.
The name points back to peach Melba, the poached peach with vanilla ice cream and raspberry purée generally credited to Escoffier, who is said to have created it for the soprano Nellie Melba in London in the early 1890s. By the time it reached American community cookbooks, the pairing of peach and raspberry had detached itself from the dessert entirely: here it becomes a salad-plate dish, with mayonnaise standing in for the cream and jam for the purée. The reliance on canned fruit is not a shortcut but the point; a good tinned peach half was dependable in February, when a fresh one was not.