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Frozen Fruit Cheese Salad
1 cream cheese 2 tablespoons cream 2 tablespoons lemon juice 1/8 teaspoon salt 1 cup canned pineapple, cut in small pieces 1/2 cup marshmallows, quartered 1/2 cup pecans, cut in small pieces 1 cup cherries, pitted 1 banana, sliced 2 cup whipping cream 3/4 cup mayonnaise Work the cheese, cream, lemon juice and salt together until smooth. Add the pineapple, marshmallows, nuts, cherries and banana. Whip the cream and stir the mayonnaise into it. Fold this into the fruit mixture. Freeze in cubes and serve on a lettuce leaf. Time for freezing about 3 hours. 18 servings.
A frozen fruit salad from the era when a household mechanical refrigerator was new enough to be a selling point, and its ice-cube trays were pressed into service for desserts and salad courses. It is essentially a sweet mayonnaise-and-cream mousse studded with fruit, frozen still — no churning.
- "1 cream cheese""1 cream cheese" means one retail package. In this period that was most often the small foil brick of about 3 ounces rather than the 8-ounce block familiar now, so read the quantity as small; the book does not specify.
- The cream quantityThe whipping cream is written as "2 cup." Two cups whipped gives roughly a quart of foam, which is a great deal against 3-1/2 cups or so of fruit — though the recipe's own claim of 18 servings does depend on that bulk. If you want the fruit forward, reduce it; judge by eye as you fold.
- Mayonnaise means the sweet kindAgainst marshmallows and sweet canned fruit, a sharp modern mayonnaise reads as aggressively savoury. A mild mayonnaise, or the cooked salad dressing many period recipes used instead, sits more comfortably here.
- Drain the pineapple hardCanned pineapple carries a great deal of syrup, and free liquid in a still-frozen mixture turns to gritty ice crystals. Press it in a sieve, and blot the cherries too.
- Which cherriesThe recipe says only "1 cup cherries, pitted" — the instruction to pit them suggests fresh or whole canned fruit rather than maraschinos. Whichever you use, drain and blot them; fresh sweet cherries will bleed colour through the white base.
- Freezing time and temperatureThe three hours reflects a refrigerator freezing compartment, which ran considerably warmer than a modern freezer. A modern freezer will set the cubes faster and then take them harder than intended, so let them stand in the refrigerator to soften a little before serving.
- The hinge: fold, do not stirThe whipped cream is what keeps this from setting into a solid block. Fold it through the fruit in a few broad strokes and stop while streaks still show.
- YieldThe book says to freeze in cubes and claims 18 servings, each set on a lettuce leaf as a salad course. The volume of the mixture is well beyond one small ice cube per person, so portion by eye, or freeze in a loaf pan and slice.