Winter Fruit Salad and Ice Cream

Fruit salad and ice cream makes at least one appearance at Phryne's St Kilda home, in Queen of the Flowers. Phryne has a refrigerator, but most homes wouldn't have - not in 1928 anyway. This recipe from Vesta's Women to Women pages in the Argus (28 March 1928) mentions neither ice cream nor whipped cream. Most of the fruits are winter fruits.

"The most satisfactory fruit salad is made with pineapple, bananas and pears as a basis.  For six people a moderately large pineapple would be needed, with four good-sized bananas and four pears. 

Cut up the bananas and put them into the bottom of the dish, then cut up the pears into fairly small pieces and add them. Pare the pineapple, remove all pits and either shred it finely with two forks, discarding the core, or grate it. Pile it on top of the pears. Sprinkle from half a cupful to three quartets of a cupful of sugar over the pineapple, add the juice of one lemon and about half a cupful of water. Cover over and let stand for two or three hours. 

Before using, stir the contents of the bowl up in order to mix well. Other fruits may be added when they are in season. Strawberries make a delicious addition, so does passion-fruit. Peaches also blend well with the salad, and when there are no other fruits in season a little preserved ginger may be used with the foundation fruits. Apples are rather too film to be suitable for use in the salad. Rockmelons and raspberries are too strongly flavoured."

My winter fruit salad also had a basis of pineapple, bananas and pears. Pineapple isn't in season so I used tinned slices, an apple, kiwifruit and passionfruit. I think Vesta is right about the apple - it was a bit too crisp. Strawberries would have been better. I skipped the sugar, lemon juice and water. Preserved ginger sounds like an interesting twist.