Game Salad
Drain the syrup from one can peaches. Arrange halves of fruit on lettuce leaves, and pour over all a dressing made by mixing two teaspoons sugar, one teaspoon celery salt, one-fourth teaspoon salt, one-eighth teaspoon pepper, a few grains cayenne, five drops Tabasco, and adding gradually four tablespoons olive oil and two tablespoons fresh lime juice. Use fresh fruit when in season.
A fruit salad meant to accompany roast game rather than to contain any; the whole dish is assembled cold and lives or dies on the dressing.
- There is no game in itThe name most likely describes its place at table: a sharp, sweet, peppery salad to serve alongside venison, duck or other roast game and cut the richness. Nothing needs hunting or cooking.
- Canned peachesThe recipe does not specify a can size, and period cans of peaches were often larger than a modern 15-16 oz tin, so the yield of halves (and the number served) will vary with what you buy. Drain them well and blot dry, or the residual syrup will thin the dressing on the plate.
- Fresh peaches insteadFor the fresh version, use three ripe freestone peaches, halved and stoned. Peel them if the skin is tough; a 30-second dip in boiling water loosens it. Fresh fruit needs the sugar in the dressing more than canned fruit does.
- The dressing is a 2:1 vinaigretteFour tablespoons oil to two tablespoons lime juice is sharper than a classic three-to-one, deliberately so against sweet fruit. Whisk the dry seasonings into the juice first, then add the oil in a thin stream so it holds together long enough to pour.
- Celery saltStill sold, but modern blends vary in strength and salt content. Taste before adding the additional quarter teaspoon of plain salt; with a heavily salted brand you may not need it.
- Cayenne and Tabasco bothFive drops of hot sauce and "a few grains" of cayenne together read as timid but are not; the sugar and oil mute the heat considerably. Judge the finished dressing on a piece of peach, not off the spoon.
- Assemble at the last minuteLettuce dressed with an oil-and-lime mixture wilts quickly. Chill the fruit and the leaves separately, mix the dressing ahead, and pour only when the plates are going out.
Fruit served with game is an old European convention -- cherries with duck, currant jelly with venison -- and this salad is that idea reworked for the American table, where the sweet element moves off the meat platter and onto its own bed of lettuce. Its ingredient list suggests a period: celery salt and bottled Tabasco were both widely available commercial products by the turn of the twentieth century. Salads of this kind were composed, plated arrangements, sent out as individual portions already dressed and garnished rather than passed in a bowl.