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Kirsch Fruits
Two sound, juicy oranges, two good-sized pears, two peaches, four plums, half pint raspberries, two sound bananas, three slices pineapple and one sound apple. Peel, core and slice the fruits. Place in a bowl with two tablespoons fine sugar, one tablespoon curacao and three tablespoons Swiss kirsch. Turn well in seasoning and serve. If any fresh cherries are at hand remove the stalks, stone and add to the other fruits.
A macédoine of fresh fruit in kirsch — closer to a dressed salad than a compote, since nothing is cooked. The proportions are for a crowd, and the alcohol is the whole point of the dish.
- YieldAs written this fills a large bowl and serves roughly six to eight. Halving everything, including the spirits, works without adjustment.
- Swiss kirschA dry, unsweetened cherry eau-de-vie, not a sweet cherry liqueur or the artificially flavoured "kirsch syrup" sold for baking. Substituting a sweetened product will make the bowl cloying, as the sugar is already accounted for.
- CuraçaoHere this means a dry-ish orange-peel liqueur; triple sec or Cointreau is the nearest current equivalent. Grand Marnier will work but pushes the dish sweeter and brandy-ward.
- Fine sugarCaster sugar, not confectioners'. Two tablespoons across this much fruit is restrained by design — taste after mixing, since ripe pineapple and pears may need none at all.
- Half pint raspberriesAbout 6 oz, or one standard supermarket punnet. Add them last and fold gently; they collapse into pink slurry if turned with the harder fruit.
- "Turn well in seasoning"The sugar and spirits are the seasoning. Turn the fruit over in the liquid rather than stirring, then let it stand — 30 minutes to an hour, covered and cold, so the juices draw out and the kirsch penetrates. Serving immediately, as the text implies, wastes the maceration.
- BrowningPears, peaches, bananas and apple all oxidise. Prepare them last, or toss the cut pieces in the citrus juice as you go; the recipe gives no instruction on the point.
- Pineapple"Three slices" means three rounds cut from a fresh pineapple, cored — roughly 8 oz.
A macédoine de fruits was a fixed item of the dessert repertoire: raw fruit cut small, sugared, and lifted with a spirit or liqueur, served cold at the end of a long menu when a cooked pudding would have been too much. The name is traditionally traced to Macedonia and Alexander's empire, a jumble of many peoples, and by the nineteenth century it was applied indiscriminately to any mixture of small-cut vegetables or fruit. The insistence on Swiss kirsch reflects a period when eaux-de-vie were sold and prized by district — the cherry brandies of Basel and the Zug region had a reputation the way a named cognac did. The fruit list is also a quiet statement of what a well-supplied city kitchen could reach by then: pineapple and bananas from steamer traffic, alongside the orchard fruit of a northern summer.