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Orange Salad
Cut oranges in halves, free the pulp entirely from the membrane in which it is encased, remove the seeds, and lay on a bed of lettuce leaves. Sprinkle with estragon, or minced green pepper. Serve with French dressing.
In preparing all sorts of fruit salads, in which the pulp must be removed from the thin white skin enclosing it, a thin, narrow knife, slightly curved at the tip, is indispensable.
A supremed-orange salad that depends almost entirely on knife work and on knowing what "French dressing" meant in 1900. Two terms in the text will mislead a modern reader.
- Estragon is tarragonThe French name was still common in American cookbooks of the period. Use fresh leaves, chopped, and go lightly — a scant teaspoon for four servings is enough against citrus.
- French dressing meant vinaigretteIn this period the term generally meant oil, vinegar, salt and pepper whisked together — not the sweet orange bottled dressing sold under that name in the United States today. Lemon juice or a mild white wine vinegar suits oranges better than cider vinegar.
- The hinge is the pithThe hinge is the membrane -- "Free the pulp entirely from the membrane" is the whole recipe. Any white left clinging turns bitter against the vinaigrette, and the segments will weep. The recipe works from halved oranges, freeing the pulp from inside each half; if you prefer, cut the peel and pith away in strips down to the flesh, then cut each segment free between the membranes over a bowl.
- The knife describedA thin, narrow, slightly curved blade is what we would now call a bird's-beak or paring knife. A flexible boning knife works as well; the point is a blade that follows a curve without tearing.
- Oranges to useNavels segment cleanly and are seedless, which spares the seed-removal step. Blood oranges give better colour against the lettuce. Avoid juice oranges, which collapse.
- Assemble lateCut segments shed juice within minutes and will flood the plate. Prepare them ahead if you like, hold them chilled in their own juice, and drain and dress only at the table.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity or number of servings. Reckon one orange each as a side salad, four oranges serving four with a small head of soft lettuce.
Fruit salads dressed with oil and vinegar rather than sugar and cream were becoming fashionable on the more cosmopolitan American table around the turn of the century. Oranges had grown steadily cheaper and more widely available as Florida and California fruit moved east by rail, though in many households they remained a treat. The use of the French estragon for tarragon, and of "French dressing" as a plain vinaigrette, both point to the same source of prestige: the salads of the professional French kitchen, which cooks of the period were encouraged to imitate. The closing note on the curved knife is characteristic of the book's practical bent — it assumes a reader equipping a kitchen, not just following a dish.