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Jellied Fruit Salad
6 apples, diced 1 cup celery, diced 1 can pineapple, diced 1/2 lb. dates, chopped 4 tablespoons salad dressing 2 cups raspberry or strawberry gelatine 1/3 cup nut meats, chopped 1 cup cream, whipped Mix the fruit, celery, salad dressing and one-fourth of the whipped cream. Arrange alternately the fruit, the gelatine and the cream in layers in a bowl. Sprinkle nuts on the top layer of cream.
A layered icebox salad from the era when a mechanical refrigerator was the newest thing in the kitchen. Nothing here is cooked; the work is in the order of assembly and in keeping the layers distinct.
- The gelatine is already set"2 cups raspberry or strawberry gelatine" means a fruit-flavoured gelatin dessert, prepared to package directions, chilled firm, then cut into cubes or broken up with a fork. One standard 3-oz box makes about 2 cups. Liquid gelatine poured over whipped cream would simply collapse the salad.
- Salad dressing, not vinaigretteIn books of this period "salad dressing" means a thick cooked or mayonnaise-style dressing, the sort sold as boiled dressing or, later, Miracle Whip. Mayonnaise thinned with a little pineapple juice is the closest substitute; an oil-and-vinegar dressing will not bind the fruit.
- Drain the pineapple hardThe recipe gives no can size; a No. 2 can of pineapple yields roughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups drained. Excess syrup will weep into the cream layers, so drain it in a sieve and press lightly.
- Keep the apples from browningSix apples diced is a large volume, and cut surfaces darken fast. Toss the dice in the reserved pineapple juice or a spoonful of lemon juice as you work, and dice them last.
- Whip the cream to soft peaksOne cup of cream whips to roughly two cups. A quarter of it goes into the fruit mixture as a binder; the rest forms the layers. Stop at soft, holding peaks so it spreads without tearing the gelatine cubes.
- Assemble cold and serve within a few hoursChill the bowl, the fruit and the gelatine before layering. The salad is at its best two to four hours after assembly; overnight the apples soften and the cream begins to separate.
- YieldAs written this is a party-sized bowl, serving ten to twelve as a salad course. Halve everything for a family meal.
- A note on the celeryThe cup of diced celery is not a mistake or a filler. Celery was a common addition to sweet gelatine salads of this period, giving savour and crunch; leave it in, cut fine, and use inner ribs.
Salads like this belong to a period when the domestic refrigerator turned chilled food into a form of display. Flavoured gelatin desserts had been sold in packets since the 1890s and were cheap and reliable by the interwar years, and cookbooks moved them out of the dessert course and into the salad course, where fruit, nuts, celery and a sweet cooked dressing could be layered in a glass bowl for the table. The combination of apple, dates, nut meats and whipped cream over gelatine is broadly characteristic of American community cookbooks of the period.