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Grapefruit, Pineapple, and Pimento Salad
Cut a large grapefruit in halves and remove the pulp with a sharp knife to avoid crushing it; remove half the pulp of a large pineapple from the core with a fork, after carefully removing the unedible outside. Dress with white mayonnaise and serve upon crisp lettuce hearts. Garnish with tiny bits of pimento. 2d. - Omit the pimento, lettuce and mayonnaise, and dress with sherry wine and sugar. For a Christmas salad, use the first formula and canned pineapple if the fresh be not at hand. Dispose the dressed pineapple and grape fruit upon shredded lettuce, having a circle of heart leaves around the edge. Dot here and there with small stars cut from the red pimento with a French cutter. Or chop the pimento fine and dispose in the shape of a large five-pointed star in the centre of the dish.
Q6
A composed fruit salad from the era when grapefruit was still a novelty on American tables. Almost all of the work is in getting the fruit out of its skin intact.
- "White mayonnaise"A pale mayonnaise made with lemon juice or a white vinegar rather than a darker cider vinegar, and without mustard or paprika, so the dressing does not muddy the fruit. Some period recipes lighten it further by folding in whipped cream.
- Getting the grapefruit outHalve it, then cut down each side of every membrane wall with a small knife and lift the segments out whole. Do this over a bowl and reserve the juice; drain the segments well before dressing, or the juice will thin the mayonnaise.
- The fork, and whyPrying pineapple flesh from the core with a fork gives ragged, juicy shreds rather than the tidy cubes a knife makes. It is worth following even though it looks careless.
- PimentosThen as now, these are skinned, cooked sweet red peppers sold in cans or jars, not raw bell pepper. Pat them dry on a towel before cutting shapes or they will bleed red into the dressing.
- "French cutter"A small tinned aspic or vegetable cutter, sold in sets of stars, crescents and diamonds. A miniature cookie cutter or the tip of a paring knife does the same job.
- Assemble at the last minuteFresh pineapple contains bromelain, a protein-digesting enzyme; it stops gelatine setting and can make cream taste bitter if left to stand. Cut and chill the fruit ahead if you like, but dress and plate shortly before serving.
- The second versionSherry and sugar over the bare fruit is a macerated compote rather than a salad, and it improves with twenty minutes' standing. Allow about a tablespoon of sherry and a teaspoon of sugar per serving, tasting as you go; the original gives no quantities.
- YieldOne large grapefruit and half a large pineapple dress four salads generously, six if the lettuce hearts are substantial.
- Raw-egg mayonnaiseA homemade mayonnaise here is never cooked. Use pasteurised eggs if serving anyone elderly, pregnant or immune-compromised, or use a good commercial mayonnaise thinned with lemon juice.
- "Q6"A printer's or index mark from the original volume, not part of the method.
Grapefruit reached American tables in quantity only in the last decades of the nineteenth century, as Florida growers found a market for a fruit long dismissed as too bitter to bother with, and by the 1900s it had the faint glamour of an expensive breakfast. Canned pimentos arrived on a roughly similar timeline, imported first from Spain and grown commercially in the American South only from the early 1910s, and cookbooks of the period use them constantly as the one reliable source of pure red on a plate. That is exactly the job they do here: the recipe is less about flavour than about colour and geometry, cut into stars for Christmas with an aspic cutter, in the manner of a kitchen where a salad was expected to be arranged as much as mixed. The alternate dressing of sherry and sugar is arguably the older idea underneath, a plain fruit macedoine of a sort said to have been served in English households long before mayonnaise was thought suitable to put on fruit at all.