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Orange-and-Litchi Nut Salad
Peel the oranges and cut them into lengthwise slices. Crush the shells of the nuts, take out the meats, and remove the stones; cut the nut meats in halves. Mix the nuts with oil, a tablespoonful to a cup, and sprinkle the orange slices with oil; add also a little lemon juice if the oranges are sweet.
Garnish with slices of orange from which the skin has not been taken, also, if desired, with lettuce dressed with French dressing. The oil and lettuce may be omitted, using sugar in place; little, however, will be needed, as the nuts are sweet, tasting much like raisins.
A late-Victorian fruit salad built on dried lychees, sold in Chinese groceries as "litchi nuts" and still available today. The recipe assumes you are shelling them yourself, which is the only fiddly part.
- Litchi nuts are dried lycheesNot a nut at all, but the whole fruit dried in its brittle red-brown shell until the flesh shrinks to a dark, chewy lump around a large seed. The raisin comparison in the text is exact; that is what they taste like. Look for them in Chinese and Southeast Asian grocers, sometimes labelled dried lychee or lai chi.
- ShellingPress the shell between finger and thumb and it cracks like an eggshell. The seed pulls free easily from dried fruit; discard it, as it is not eaten. Shelling and pitting a cupful takes a while, so allow time for it.
- Canned lychees will not substituteCanned or fresh lychees are wet and mildly sweet and give a watery salad. The dried fruit is the point: concentrated, faintly smoky, dense enough to hold up against citrus.
- The oilThe recipe gives a tablespoon of oil to a cup but does not say which; olive oil was the usual salad oil of the period and is the likely intention. A mild oil suits better than a peppery modern extra-virgin, which will fight the fruit.
- Cutting oranges lengthwiseSlice from stem end to blossom end rather than in rounds, so each piece carries a section of every segment. Remove the pith and any seeds as you go; a supremed segment works equally well.
- The lemon judgementThe text adds lemon only if the oranges are sweet, so taste before you commit. Sweet modern eating oranges will usually want a squeeze.
- The sugar versionThe alternative given at the end drops both oil and lettuce and dresses the fruit with a little sugar instead. This is the better version if the salad is going out as a dessert or a breakfast dish.
- YieldNo quantities are given. Three oranges and a cup of shelled litchis makes four modest servings. Assemble shortly before serving, as sliced orange sheds juice.
Dried litchis appear to have reached the United States with Chinese immigration and are said to have been sold in Chinatown shops in cities such as San Francisco and New York; the fact that the author has to explain what they taste like, and reaches for raisins to do it, suggests how unfamiliar they still were to readers. The name "litchi nut" is usually explained by the hard shell that has to be cracked, though that account is tradition rather than documented etymology. Pairing them with orange may fit what is often described as a turn-of-the-century fashion for fruit salads dressed with oil and lemon rather than sugar and cream.