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Coconut Fruit Salad
1½ cups mixed diced tart ap- 4 tablespoons orange-juice ples and celery
Salt
½ cup shredded coconut
Paprika
1 tablespoon lemon-juice
Lettuce leaves
4 tablespoons oil
Currant or plum jelly
Mix the apples, celery, and coconut. Sprinkle with the lemonjuice. Add a French dressing made from the oil and orange-juice, with salt and paprika to taste. Line a salad-bowl with lettuce leaves and pile chilled salad in center. Dot with currant or plum jelly.
A no-cook salad that depends entirely on the balance of its dressing and the crispness of its apples. The only real technique is in the timing.
- The hinge: acid firstThe lemon juice goes on the cut apples immediately, before the dressing, to stop them browning. Dice the apples last, after the celery and coconut are ready, and toss at once.
- Shredded coconut, then and nowThe recipe does not specify, but unsweetened shredded or desiccated coconut suits it better than the sweetened flaked kind sold for cake decoration. Sweetened coconut will throw the dressing out of balance against the tart apple; look for unsweetened shreds or fresh coconut grated on the coarse side of a box grater.
- The dressing proportionsFour tablespoons oil to four tablespoons orange juice is 1:1, a far higher proportion of liquid to oil than a standard vinaigrette, though orange juice is much weaker in acid than vinegar. Whisk or shake it hard in a jar just before dressing, as it separates quickly with no mustard or egg to hold it.
- OilThe recipe calls simply for "oil," meaning a mild salad oil rather than anything assertive. Use a neutral oil or a mild olive oil; a strong, peppery extra-virgin will fight the coconut.
- Tart applesGranny Smith, Braeburn or a firm russet. A soft sweet apple such as Red Delicious will go mealy against the celery and gives no contrast to the orange juice.
- ChillingThe instruction to pile "chilled salad" means dressing it and holding it in the refrigerator briefly. Left too long the celery weeps and the coconut absorbs the dressing.
- The jellyCurrant or plum jelly is dotted on in small dabs with a teaspoon, as a sweet-tart counterpoint rather than a sauce. A firm-set jelly holds its shape; a runny one will bleed into the dressing.
- YieldAbout 2 cups of fruit and coconut before dressing, a little more once dressed; three or four servings as a side salad on lettuce.
Fruit-and-celery salads bound with a light dressing were a fixture of American home cookery in the first quarter of the twentieth century, when "salad" in a household manual meant something composed and chilled rather than a bowl of leaves. Shredded coconut had by then become an ordinary pantry item: desiccated coconut is generally said to have been imported and packaged commercially in the United States from the 1890s onward, which put it within reach of cooks who would never have cracked a whole nut. The lettuce leaves here, which the recipe calls for only in the instruction to line a salad-bowl, most likely served as a liner and a garnish, and the dab of currant or plum jelly reflects a period habit of setting a sweet preserve against a savory dressing, the same instinct that put jelly beside roast meat.