Hff 6.10: First Fruits

The Challenge: First Fruits Make a dish involving fruit in some capacity.

The Recipe: Salad of Mixed Summer Fruits from Eliza Acton's Modern Cookery for Private Families.

 

The Date/Year and Region: 1865, London

How Did You Make It: Washed about a pint each of golden raspberries, red raspberries, and blackberries. Picked mint leaves and arranged them around the plate. Following Francetelli's instructions (except for using a flat plate instead of a deep dish), I started by making a large circle with the golden raspberries, selected the most solid and uniform berries to start, and then filling in the circle. I then repeated this process with a layer of red raspberries making a slightly smaller, then a layer of blackberries, then golden raspberries again, ending with a single red raspberry at the top of the pile. 

The recipe then calls for pouring wine over the lot, or else using Devonshire cream. As my guests mostly don't drink, I opted for the later. Instructions in the same cookbook also call Devonshire cream 'clotted cream', and since I was worried about safe food handling during the 'heat cream for 12 hours' step, I opted to use a purchased clotted cream, which I daubed around the perimeter at intervals.

 

Time to Complete: About 20 minutes.

 

Total Cost: ~$12 fruit, don't recall for the clotted cream (and used very little wine)

How Successful Was It?: I'm fairly pleased with how the berried came together: the color contrast looked well, and they didn't roll all around like the cherries I tried before. The cream was in no condition to pour or spread, and the instructions were not clear on how to apply it, which it why I put it off to the sides. Also, my cooking mentor had compared it to butter, so I wanted to preserve the option to take the fruit with or without the clotted cream. 

 

Berries are berries, which I love. The clotted cream didn't go over well: one guest couldn't handle the texture, while another didn't like the flavor with the fruit (but happily spread it over the Sally Lunn). Personally, I thought that the cream didn't really taste like anything at all. I later poured a sweet moscato wine over the leftover berries (not the cream!) and really enjoyed how the berries and wine went together.

How Accurate Is It? The recipe calls for strawberries, white and red currants, and white or red raspberries. I intentionally substituted blackberries (available in my area) for the currants (not available in my area), but completely forgot the strawberries.As previously noted, I'm not clear on how the cream was to be applied, but in any case, I think I'll stick with the wine version in the future, and opt for 'a plate of fresh fruit' instead of 'fruit salad' when I need a non-alcoholic summer fruit dish.