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Orange Salad (Cut five thin-skinned sour)
Cut five thin-skinned sour oranges in very thin slices, and slices in quarters. Marinate with a dressing made by mixing one-third cup olive oil, one and one-half tablespoons each lemon juice and vinegar, one-third teaspoon salt, one-fourth teaspoon paprika. and a few grains mustard. Serve on a bed of watercress
A sharp citrus salad of the sort Fannie Farmer liked to serve alongside duck, goose or game. Two things decide whether it works: the fruit and the peel.
- "Sour oranges""Sour oranges" most likely means bitter or Seville oranges, in season roughly January through March and now hard to find outside Latin and Caribbean groceries; the term may also have covered merely tart oranges. Failing those, use blood oranges or Cara Caras with a squeeze more lemon; a standard sweet navel will taste flat against this dressing.
- Peel or notThe original does not say to peel, and "thin-skinned" suggests the peel was meant to be left on and sliced very fine. If your oranges have thick pith, peel and segment them instead, or the salad turns bitter in the wrong way.
- SlicingCut crosswise into rounds no thicker than an eighth of an inch, then quarter the rounds. A sharp thin-bladed knife on a board that catches juice; save any juice for the dressing.
- "A few grains mustard""A few grains" is the book's phrase for the smallest measurable quantity — a small pinch of dry mustard, less than an eighth of a teaspoon. Whisk it into the lemon juice and vinegar before adding the oil; it will help the dressing hold, though at this amount the effect is slight.
- The dressing ratioOne-third cup oil to three tablespoons acid is a deliberately sharp vinaigrette, near 2:1 rather than the modern 3:1. Any plain white or cider vinegar suits; leave sweet balsamic out of it.
- Marinating timeFifteen to twenty minutes is enough. Left an hour, the slices slump and shed liquid, and the watercress underneath will wilt on contact.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield; five oranges will fill roughly six small salad plates. Dress the cress lightly with the marinade that pools in the bowl rather than serving it dry, and grind on black pepper if you want it — the paprika contributes colour and only mild heat.
Orange salads belong to the late nineteenth-century American habit of serving a sharp fruit course with rich roast meat — duck, goose, pork, game birds — a role that cranberry sauce and applesauce filled at other tables. Bitter oranges, the Seville type used for marmalade, were the older cooking orange in Europe; sweet dessert oranges only became the year-round default as Florida and California shipping matured. Watercress here is doing what it does throughout Fannie Farmer's salad chapter: providing a peppery green base at a time when lettuce was seasonal and cress could, it is often said, be had well beyond the lettuce season. The paprika is characteristic of the book as well — it recurs in the salad dressings, valued at least as much for colour against pale oil as for heat.