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Berkeley Salad
1 cup diced pineapple 2 cups diced oranges 1 cup diced bananas 1 cup seeded Malaga grapes 1 cup pineapple juice 1 cup hot water 3 tablespoonfuls cornstarch 1/2 cup sugar Mix the cornstarch and sugar and pour over them, stirring constantly, the hot water. Cook directly over the fire for from five to ten minutes. Remove from the stove. Add pineapple juice and lemon juice, and cool. Prepare the fruit by dicing the pineapple, fresh or canned, oranges and the bananas. Remove the Malaga grapes from the stem, wash thoroughly, peel and cut in halves. Remove the seeds and add to the other fruits. Pour the dressing over the salad and serve upon a plate. Garnish with grape leaves or any preferred garnish.
A fruit salad in the American sense of the term: sweetened fruit under a cooked, cornstarch-thickened dressing. Nothing here is difficult, but two things in the original need attention — a lemon that never appears in the ingredient list, and a dressing that will set far thicker than most cooks expect.
- The missing lemonLemon juice is called for in the method but omitted from the ingredients. Two tablespoons is a reasonable reading for this quantity of dressing; it also keeps the bananas from browning.
- Cornstarch ratioThree tablespoons to two cups of liquid is a firm pudding consistency, not a pourable dressing. If you want something that coats rather than blankets the fruit, one to one and a half tablespoons is closer to modern taste.
- Cooking the starchThe hinge of the recipe. Cornstarch must reach a full boil and hold it briefly to lose its raw chalkiness and reach maximum thickness — five to ten minutes over direct heat, stirring, is what the original directs. Adding the acidic pineapple and lemon juice only after it comes off the stove works in the dish's favour, whatever the reason behind it: acid boiled with cornstarch breaks the starch down and thins the sauce.
- Malaga grapesA large, firm, seeded table grape sold in both white and red forms, once common in American markets and now rarely seen. Red Globe grapes are the nearest thing widely available; any large seeded grape works. Modern seedless grapes make the peeling and seeding steps unnecessary — halve them and move on.
- PineappleCanned pineapple in juice supplies both the fruit and the cup of juice in one tin. Fresh pineapple is better eating but you will need to press or reserve juice separately.
- Cooling and assemblyThe dressing must be fully cold before it meets the fruit or the bananas will soften. Dice the bananas last and toss them in lemon juice first.
- Grape leavesFresh grape leaves would have been an easy summer garnish; brined leaves from a jar are too salty and limp for the purpose. A bed of crisp lettuce does the same job.
- YieldAbout five cups of fruit — six servings as a salad course, four as a dessert.
Cooked, starch-thickened dressings for fruit were a fixture of American salad-making in the first decades of the twentieth century, when the "salad" course had drifted a long way from greens and oil. Books of this period are full of sweet fruit combinations bound with boiled dressings, cream, or cornstarch, served on lettuce and treated as a proper course rather than dessert. The named-for-a-place convention — Waldorf, Berkeley, and dozens of others — was standard, and the connection is usually to a hotel, a club, or simply a fashionable address; for this one no specific origin is documented, and the name may be no more than a genteel label. Malaga grapes, imported in bulk from Spain and packed in cork, were common enough in American markets that a cookbook could call for them by name without explanation.