Home › Salads › Orange Mint Salad
Orange Mint Salad
Remove pulp from four large oranges, by cutting fruit in halves crosswise and using a spoon. Sprinkle with two tablespoons powdered sugar, and add two tablespoons finely chopped mint, and one tablespoon each lemon juice and Sherry wine. Chill thoroughly, serve in glasses, and garnish each with a sprig of mint. Should the oranges be very juicy, pour off a portion of the juice before turning the mixture into glasses. 2 oranges 3 bananas
A ten-minute fruit cup that depends entirely on the quality of the oranges and the freshness of the mint. Two details in the text need translating before you start.
- "Powdered sugar" means superfineIn American cookbooks of this period powdered sugar is finely ground granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold under that name today. Use superfine (caster) sugar, or granulated whizzed a few seconds in a spice grinder; modern confectioners' sugar will cloud the juice.
- The stray line at the end"2 oranges 3 bananas" reads as a stray fragment, most likely carried over from a neighbouring recipe rather than belonging to this one. Ignore it, or take it as a hint that a sliced banana is a period-appropriate addition.
- Getting the pulp outHalving crosswise and spooning works, but a paring knife run around the inside of each membrane wall first releases the segments cleanly. Work over a bowl so nothing is lost, and pick out the seeds and any tough central pith.
- Chop the mint lateCut mint bruises and darkens quickly, so chop it just before it goes into the fruit. Spearmint suits this better than peppermint, which is considerably more aggressive; the recipe itself does not specify a variety.
- The sherryA dry or medium amontillado suits this better than a sweet cream sherry, given the sugar already added. It can be left out without harming the salad, though the tablespoon does round off the acidity.
- Chilling and drainingAn hour in the refrigerator is enough; longer and the mint darkens and the fruit softens. The instruction to pour off some juice if the oranges are very juicy is worth heeding.
- YieldFour oranges will fill about four small glasses as a first course or a light dessert. The recipe says only to serve in glasses, with the mint sprig as garnish.
This recipe is titled and treated as a salad rather than a dessert, which tells you something about how the course was understood: a salad of this period could be fruit, chilled and lightly dressed, served in a glass before or between heavier dishes. Oranges were a luxury becoming an everyday item in these decades, as refrigerated rail cars brought Florida and California fruit north in quantity, and cookbooks of the period are full of orange baskets, orange cups and orange salads that show the fruit off whole. The splash of sherry is characteristic too: small quantities of wine and spirits appear as flavouring rather than drink.