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Cherry Filbert Salad
1 can large white cherries 1/4 lb. Shelled filberts 1 cream cheese 2 tablespoons cherry juice dash paprika 1 tablespoon lemon juice 4 tablespoons salad oil 1/2 teaspoon salt romaine Drain cherries and blanch filberts. Pit cherries, stuff the pit cavity with a nut. Arrange 8 cherries and a small cream cheese ball on crisp leaf of romaine for each portion. Beat fruit juices, seasonings and oil together for dressing, pour over the fruit.
A composed fruit salad of the sort that opened company dinners in the 1930s. Nothing here is difficult, but three of the ingredients are written in units that no longer appear on a label.
- "1 cream cheese"This means one retail package; in this period that was usually the small 3-ounce package rather than a large block. Use about 3 oz, not an 8-ounce block, or the cheese balls will overwhelm eight cherries.
- White cherriesCanned Royal Ann (Napoleon) cherries, sold in syrup and pale gold rather than red. A standard modern can should give enough large cherries for four portions of eight, though counts vary. Drain them, and save two tablespoons of the juice for the dressing.
- Filberts are hazelnutsThe names are interchangeable. A quarter pound shelled gives about 3/4 cup, well more than the 32 nuts you need, so allow for breakage.
- Blanching the nutsThe recipe says only "blanch." Hazelnut skins are bitter and do not slip off in plain water as almond skins do; the easiest modern route is to toast them in a moderate oven (around 350F, 10 to 12 minutes) and rub them in a towel while warm, so the skins flake away. Let them cool before stuffing.
- Pitting without splittingThe hinge of the dish is keeping each cherry whole. Canned cherries are soft, so push the pit out from the stem end with a narrow tool rather than cutting in, and choose the largest fruit in the can for stuffing.
- The dressingFour tablespoons oil to one of lemon and two of cherry juice is a sweet, loose dressing. Beat it hard just before serving or whisk it in a jar; there is no emulsifier, so it will separate within a few minutes.
- RomaineUse the small inner leaves, chilled and dried thoroughly. Dressed fruit on a wet leaf slides off the plate.
- YieldNot stated; at eight cherries a plate, one can should give about four portions. Assemble no more than half an hour ahead and keep cold, or the cheese balls slump.
Salads like this belong to the era when a fruit course on a lettuce leaf counted as the elegant opening to a Sunday dinner. Canned Royal Ann cherries were a Pacific Northwest crop and a familiar pantry item by the interwar years, useful here because they are pale and firm enough to stuff. Filling pitted fruit -- dates, prunes, cherries -- with a nut or a cheese was a long-standing trick, and the small cream cheese ball alongside is characteristic of American salads of the period. The oil-and-fruit-juice dressing, with no vinegar at all, is typical of period fruit salads, which aimed for sweetness balanced by salt and a dash of paprika for colour.