Two quirky pineapple salads from the 1940s

The American Woman’s Cook Book, edited and revised by Ruth Berolzheimer, Director Culinary Arts Institute Chicago 1946

“To become a good cook requires more than the blind following of a recipe. This is frequently illustrated when several women living in the same community, all using the same recipe, obtain widely differing results. It is the reason so many cooks say, “I good luck with my cake today”, or “I had bad luck with my bread yesterday”. 

Happily, luck causes neither the success or the failure of a product. To become a good cook means to gain a knowledge of foods and how they behave, and skill in manipulating them. The recipe by itself, helpful as it is, will not produce a good product; the human being using the recipe must interpret it and must have skill in handling the materials it prescribes.” The editor.

Pineapple and Nut Salad in Tomato Baskets

1 cup crushed pineapple; 1 cup broken nut-meats; French dressing; 6 tomatoes; mayonnaise

Mix pineapple with nut-meats and stand in French dressing in the refrigerator. Peel a cut off the top of each tomato leaving a strip to form a handle. Carefully scoop out the center and fill with the pineapple and nuts. Place one teaspoon of mayonnaise on top of each basket.

Pineapple and Cream Cheese Salad

6 slices canned pineapple; 1 cup cream cheese; purple grape-juice; French dressing; lettuce leaves

Work enough grape-juice into the cream cheese to soften it so that it can be made into balls with the hands or with butter paddles. Place a slice of pineapple on a lettuce leaf, put a cheese ball on top and pour grape-juice and French dressing over all.