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Hot Fruit Salad
Melt two tablespoons butter; add four tablespoons sugar, one quarter cup water, and one quarter cup lemon juice; add two cups mixed fruit, apples, bananas, figs and cherries; when hot, serve with cream sweetened and beaten until stiff.
Peach Canapé Melt two tablespoons butter; add two cups peaches with skin and stones removed; cook ten minutes; add sugar and lemon juice, and serve on slices of sautéd bread or sponge cake; garnish with cream.
Pineapple Canapé Substitute two cups shredded pineapple for peaches, and follow directions for Peach Canapé.
A chafing-dish sweet: fruit warmed in a butter-sugar-lemon syrup and served at once. The technique is sound, but the original assumes a blazer pan over an alcohol flame and a cook who knows when to stop.
- The hinge: keep it briefThis is warmed fruit, not stewed fruit. Bananas and cherries want a minute or two in the hot syrup at most; hold them longer and the bananas break down into paste. Add firmer fruit first and finish with the soft.
- Chafing dish or skilletThe recipe names no vessel, though dishes of this kind were commonly made in a chafing dish over a spirit lamp; with the water pan in place the heat is gentle and indirect. In a modern skillet, work over medium-low and watch the sugar.
- "Figs" hereMost likely dried figs, which need to be stemmed and sliced, and benefit from a few minutes' soaking in warm water so they soften rather than stay leathery in the syrup; fresh or preserved figs are not ruled out.
- CherriesStoned fresh sour cherries or drained canned cherries both work. If using canned, cut the added sugar back, and account for the extra liquid.
- Sweetened cream, beaten stiffPlain whipped cream with a spoonful of sugar. Use a cream with enough fat to whip - roughly 30 percent or more; lighter cream holds its shape poorly against hot fruit.
- Peaches, skin and stones removedBlanch 30 seconds in boiling water and the skins slip off. Ten minutes suits firm fruit; ripe peaches will be soft in five.
- Sautéd breadSlices of white bread fried in butter until golden on both sides, essentially fried toast. Sponge cake, the alternative given, absorbs the syrup faster and should be topped just before serving.
- Shredded pineappleFresh pineapple cut in fine strips, or canned crushed pineapple well drained. Fresh pineapple contains bromelain, an enzyme that attacks dairy proteins over time (it is destroyed by the heat of canning), so it is safest to garnish at the table.
- YieldTwo cups of fruit serves four as a dessert, or two if it is the whole of a late supper.
Chafing-dish cookery had a real vogue in American homes from the 1890s through the 1910s, promoted as the equipment of the bachelor apartment, the college room and the after-theatre supper: one pan, one flame, no kitchen and no servant required. Cookbooks of the period devote whole chapters to it, and the dishes share a family resemblance, quick, buttery, sweet or richly savoury, and finished in front of the guests. Lowney's, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, published its cook book as a general household volume rather than a confectionery pamphlet, which is why a fruit dish sits alongside the cocoa recipes. The "canapé" label here is applied to a sweet fruit dish on a fried bread base, which looks like an idiosyncratic extension by this book rather than the standard savoury sense of the word.