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Fruit Cocktail
Remove pulp from grape fruit, and mix with shredded pineapple, bananas cut in slices and slices cut in quarters, and strawberries cut in halves, using half as much pineapple and banana as grape fruit, and allowing four strawberries to each serve. There should be two cups fruit. Pour over a dressing made of one-third cup Sherry wine, three tablespoons apricot brandy, one-half cup sugar, and a few grains salt. Chill thoroughly, serve in double cocktail glasses, and garnish with candied cherries and leaves.
A first-course fruit cup rather than a dessert, and the sweet fortified dressing is the whole point of it. Two cups of prepared fruit is the working quantity.
- YieldTwo cups of fruit would fill roughly four small cocktail glasses as a starter, though the recipe gives no serving count. Four strawberries to each serving, as stated, is the measure for scaling up.
- "Double cocktail glasses"A period service piece; the term is generally taken to mean a small glass bowl set inside a larger one that can be packed with ice, though the recipe does not explain it. Any chilled stemmed glass will serve.
- Grapefruit pulpCut the peel and all white pith away from the whole fruit, then cut each segment free of its membrane over a bowl to catch the juice. Membrane left on turns bitter and chewy against the soft fruit.
- Shredded pineappleAt the time this probably meant fresh pineapple torn along the grain with a fork, or the canned "shredded" style. Small dice from a fresh pineapple is the modern equivalent; drain canned pineapple well or the dressing goes watery.
- Apricot brandyHere this means a sweet apricot liqueur, not the dry eau-de-vie sold as apricot brandy in some countries today. Apricot liqueur is the closer match; three tablespoons in two cups of fruit is assertive.
- The sugarHalf a cup is a great deal of sugar for two cups of fruit. With good ripe fruit, start with a quarter cup, taste the dressing before pouring, and add more only if the grapefruit is sharp.
- ChillingAn hour in the refrigerator is enough for the fruit to take up the wine. Much longer and the bananas darken and the strawberries collapse, so slice those two last.
- The garnishCandied cherries and "leaves" most likely means the candied angelica strips used for decoration in this period. Mint leaves or thin strips of candied citrus peel serve now.
- AlcoholNothing is cooked off, so the Sherry and liqueur are served as-is. Not a dish for children or anyone avoiding alcohol; a chilled fruit syrup with lemon juice takes the same fruit.
Fruit cocktails of this kind appeared on American tables around the turn of the twentieth century as a first course served in a stemmed glass, and the name is usually explained as taking the place a cocktail would otherwise occupy — a traditional account rather than a documented one. The alcoholic dressing here fits it. Grapefruit, fresh pineapple and out-of-season strawberries were all comparatively costly in northern markets, shipped up from Florida and the West Indies, and the assembly belongs to the improved rail and steamship trade that put southern fruit on northern tables in winter. The name later drifted downward to mean the canned mixture in syrup.