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Fig-and-Nut Salad
Slice pulled figs, cooked and cooled, and mix with them a few slices of walnuts or blanched almonds. Serve with French dressing made of claret and lemon juice instead of vinegar, or with a cream dressing. In using the cream dressing, mix the ingredients with a little of the dressing and dispose additional dressing here and there, using the forcing-bag and tube. When available, fresh figs are preferable to those that have been cooked.
A two-minute assembly salad whose only real work is getting the figs right. Everything else is a dressing decision.
- "Pulled figs"Apparently a grade of dried figs shaped by hand rather than pressed into bricks. Any good soft dried fig works; if they are leathery, simmer them until plump (10-15 minutes in water, or in water with a strip of lemon peel), then drain and chill thoroughly before slicing, as the recipe's "cooked and cooled" requires.
- Fresh figs are the better optionThe recipe says so at the end, and it is right. Ripe fresh figs need no cooking at all -- quarter or slice them and dress just before serving, since they weep quickly once cut.
- ClaretPeriod shorthand for dry red Bordeaux, and by extension any dry, moderately tannic red. Use it as the acid alongside lemon juice in place of vinegar; a rough proportion is 3 parts oil to 1 part combined claret and lemon, with salt and a little pepper.
- Cream dressingPeriod cream dressings were generally either a cooked (boiled) dressing loosened with cream, or mayonnaise lightened with whipped cream. For the piped garnish described here you want a version stiff enough to hold a shape.
- Forcing-bag and tubeA pastry bag with a tube (tip); a small star tip suits the job. Dress the fruit lightly with a spoonful or two, then pipe over and around it -- the point is decoration, so pipe at the last moment.
- The nuts"slices of walnuts" probably means halves cut lengthwise rather than chopped, so they read as a garnish. Toasting them briefly and cooling them improves the flavour and keeps them from going soft against wet fruit.
This comes from the era when American cookbooks were newly enthusiastic about fruit salads, an enthusiasm often attributed to dried and canned fruit becoming cheap and reliable and to the chafing dish and the ladies' luncheon, which are said to have created demand for light, decorative courses. Dried figs were a staple import from Smyrna, with California orchards expanding fast in the same period, and "pulled figs" was a recognised commercial grade sold loose rather than in the familiar pressed layers. The claret-and-lemon variation on French dressing suggests what may have been a period inclination to treat wine as a milder substitute for vinegar with sweet fruit -- a sensible instinct, since vinegar tends to fight the sugar in figs. The piped cream dressing has the look of the plating generally associated with the turn of the century, when garnish applied with a pastry bag is often said to have signalled a well-drilled kitchen.