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Ginger Ale Salad
Two pint bottles ginger ale, 2 tbsp. gelatine, 1/4 cup lemon juice, few grains salt, 2 tbsp. sugar, 3/4 lb. white grapes. Soak gelatine in 1/2 cup ginger ale, then add one cup hot ginger ale. Then add two cups cold ginger ale, then lemon juice, sugar and salt. Peel, seed and cut in halves the grapes. Put in individual molds to jell. Serve on a slice of orange, which is placed on lettuce. Boiled cream salad dressing best on this.
— Mrs. Agnes Dunlop
A congealed salad of the sort that dominated American church cookbooks for half a century. Nothing here is difficult, but the gelatine measure and the vanished grapes both need a word.
- Gelatine measureTwo tablespoons of granulated gelatine is two standard envelopes (about 1/2 oz total), enough to set roughly 4 cups of liquid firmly enough to unmold. The directions here use 1/2 cup for soaking, 1 cup hot and 2 cups cold ginger ale, plus 1/4 cup lemon juice: about 3 3/4 cups, slightly less than the two bottles listed.
- Two pint bottlesFour cups in all as listed, though the method only accounts for 3 1/2 cups of it. Buy a little extra if your bottles are metric (a 500 ml bottle is just over two cups) or if anyone is drinking it.
- The carbonation goesHeating one cup and stirring the rest into dissolved gelatine drives off most of the fizz, and little carbonation survives the setting. Stir gently rather than whisking to keep what sparkle there is.
- White grapesIn period usage these were green table grapes with seeds and tougher skins, which is why peeling and seeding are specified. Modern seedless green grapes need only halving; skins on Thompson types are thin enough to leave.
- Suspending the fruitChill the mixture until it thickens to raw egg white before adding the grapes, or they will sink to what becomes the top of the unmolded salad. Then divide among molds and set.
- Molds and unmoldingIndividual molds of about 2/3 cup. Dip briefly in warm water and invert; 3 to 4 hours in the refrigerator will set them, overnight is safer.
- Boiled cream salad dressingA cooked dressing of eggs, vinegar, sugar and cream thickened over water, tart and custard-like, not mayonnaise.
- YieldSix to eight individual molds, served as a first course or alongside cold meat rather than as dessert.
Gelatine salads became a fixture of American home cooking once granulated gelatine was sold in pre-measured envelopes, which took the tedious business of boiling calves' feet out of the ordinary kitchen and put a set mold within reach of anyone with a cool larder. Ginger ale had a parallel rise as a respectable non-alcoholic drink, and it is often said to have been promoted in temperance-minded households of the sort that produced church-society cookbooks, so a salad made with two bottles of it may well have carried a certain modern, wholesome glamour. Named contributors are the whole structure of these volumes: the Philathea classes were young women's Bible-study groups affiliated with the Baraca-Philathea movement, and such recipes were typically collected from members to raise funds, which may be why Mrs. Dunlop's name sits under the dish. Serving a sweet jelly on lettuce with a cooked cream dressing looks odd now, but at the time the salad course was understood loosely enough to hold almost anything cold and molded.