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Frozen Fruit Salad
1 pint cream 1 1/2 cups fruit cut fine (cherries, peaches, pineapple, etc.) 3/4 cup mayonnaise 1 teaspoon powdered sugar 1 teaspoon instantaneous gelatin 2 tablespoons cold water Lettuce.
Soak the gelatin in the cold water, melt it over steam, and beat it into the mayonnaise. Add the sugar to the cream and whip it, then combine with the mayonnaise. Stir in the cut-up fruit. Pack in ice and freeze as for a mousse. The mayonnaise may be omitted from the mixture to be frozen and served separately.
A still-frozen salad from the era when frozen fruit-and-mayonnaise mixtures were fashionable party food. It needs no ice-cream churn, but it does need cold fruit and well-drained fruit.
- Drain the fruit hardAny syrup or juice clinging to the fruit freezes into gritty crystals and the mixture separates. Drain canned cherries, peaches and pineapple thoroughly and blot them dry before folding them in; if using fresh fruit, cut it small and let it sit in a sieve first.
- Instantaneous gelatinA granulated powdered gelatin sold as needing no long soaking, though this recipe still soaks it briefly in cold water. A teaspoon is a little under half a modern quarter-ounce envelope, and at that quantity it appears to be there mainly to keep the mayonnaise from breaking rather than to set the salad.
- "Melt over steam"Set the softened gelatin in a small bowl or cup over simmering water until it is clear and liquid, then beat it into the mayonnaise while both are still barely warm. Cold gelatin hitting cold mayonnaise will string into threads.
- A pint of creamTwo cups of heavy whipping cream, whipped to soft peaks only. Whipped stiff, it will not fold cleanly into the mayonnaise base and the frozen texture turns buttery.
- Freezing "as for a mousse"This means still-freezing, without stirring. Pack the mixture into a mold or loaf pan, cover the surface with parchment or wrap pressed directly on it, and freeze solid, four to six hours. The original directs only that the mold be packed in ice (period practice for this was ice mixed with salt); a home freezer does the same work.
- The mayonnaiseMayonnaise of this period was often made at home with raw yolks, though jarred commercial mayonnaise was also available. Use a commercial pasteurized mayonnaise, and choose a plain one rather than a sweetened salad dressing, since the recipe already carries only a teaspoon of sugar.
- Yield and servingServes six to eight as a salad course. Unmold, cut in thick slices, and set each on a lettuce leaf; let the slices stand a few minutes so they are firm rather than icy. If the mayonnaise is left out of the frozen mixture, spoon it over at the table.
Frozen fruit salads were a fashion in American cooking of the 1920s and 1930s. The combination of whipped cream, mayonnaise and canned fruit looks strange now, but at the time mayonnaise was understood simply as the standard dressing for fruit salad, and freezing it with cream was a way of turning a salad course into something that could be made in the morning and unmolded before guests. The gelatin is the practical detail worth noticing, a small insurance policy against the dressing separating as it froze.