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Twenty-Four Hour Salad
3 egg yolks 1 t sugar ¼ C cream Juice 1 lemon 15c marshmallows Cook together until smooth. Cool, and add the following: ¾ pt. whipping cream-beaten stiff 1 lb. green grapes seeded and halved 8 slices pineapple, cut in cubes 15c pecans Mix together and let stand 24 hours. Stir again just before serving. Mrs. Earl L. Gruenwald.
A cooked-custard fruit salad of the sort church cookbooks filed under relishes rather than desserts. The typography has suffered in transcription, so a few quantities need reading through.
- The 15c measuresThe cream measures read a quarter cup and three-quarters of a pint (a cup and a half) of whipping cream. "15c marshmallows" and "15c pecans" likely mean fifteen cents' worth, a shorthand that does turn up in community cookbooks, but the intended quantity cannot be recovered with certainty.
- Cook the custard properlyYolks, sugar, the 1/4 cup cream and lemon juice want a double boiler or very low direct heat, stirred constantly until the mixture coats a spoon (about 170F). The recipe cooks the marshmallows with the rest; melting them into the hot base off the heat is the safer modern handling, since boiled they scorch and the yolks scramble.
- Lemon and dairyAdding lemon juice to a cream-and-yolk mixture risks curdling if the heat is high. Whisk the juice in gradually and keep the pan moving. If it does break, a quick blitz with an immersion blender while warm usually pulls it back.
- Cool completely before foldingThe custard must be cold before the whipped cream goes in, or the cream deflates and the salad weeps overnight. Chill it over an ice bath if time is short.
- Grapes"Green grapes seeded and halved" tells you the cook expected seeded varieties; seedless table grapes existed but were not assumed here. Modern seedless green grapes, halved, need no further work.
- PineappleEight slices most likely means canned rings, drained well. Fresh pineapple contains bromelain, which breaks down egg and dairy proteins and can leave the mixture slack and bitter over 24 hours; canned pineapple is heat-treated and does not.
- The 24 hoursThe standing time is what lets the marshmallow custard soften and bind the fruit. Cover and keep it in the refrigerator for the whole period.
- YieldAbout 8 to 10 servings as a side salad. Traditionally served on lettuce leaves alongside the main course rather than at the end of the meal.
The "twenty-four hour salad" was a fixture of American church and club cookbooks from roughly the 1910s through the 1950s, reflecting an older sense of "salad" as an accompaniment to meat rather than a sweet course. Its structure is a cooked boiled dressing lightened with whipped cream, a technique that predates the recipe. The marshmallows, canned pineapple rings and pecans are markers of the period: all three had become cheap, shelf-stable and nationally distributed, and appear together in related recipes filed under names like heavenly hash, ambrosia and frozen fruit salad. The pricing of ingredients by the nickel and dime was ordinary in contributed recipes.