Miss Axtell’s Cantaloupe Salad Recipe

The cantaloupe salad recipe is an interesting mix.  In addition to the obvious main ingredient, it features plums topped with a sugar syrup and mayonnaise dressing.  Now before you get grossed out about mayo on plums, this could be more of a sweet mayonnaise implied.  I have seen recipes for mayo that have more sugar in them.  Back in the 1920’s, ladies cooked all the meals and just knew what is implied when they read a recipe.  For myself, I would not put a regular mayo on fruit, but this one does offer an interesting take on fruit salad.  As and added bonus, it will make your dinner table pretty!

If you decide to try this recipe, let me know how it turns out.  I’m very curious about this dish.

Cantaloupe Recipe

Cut small cantaloupe in half, remove seeds, set on ice till thoroughly chilled.  Scald, not cook, three large red plums for each half of a cantaloupe.  1 cup sugar, 1/4 cup of water for plums.  Cool plums and fill the cantaloupe with fruit and one spoon of syrup.  Put a spoonful of mayonnaise dressing in which there are a few minced nasturtium seed pods, on each center.  Be careful not to hid the plums with the mayonnaise.  Sprinkle minced watercress over the centers.  Set on a large chop plate, scatter tender leaves, buds and blossoms of nasturtiums between and around cantaloupes.  Makes a beautiful salad as well as a pretty decoration for your dinner table.

Miss Dorothy Axtell, San Rafael – San Francisco Chronicle – 17 Jul 1921