Ambrosia Salad
- Tracy Scheckel
- Jul 18
- 3 min read
I grew up with ambrosia as one of the summer picnic staples. It was either fruit salad or ambrosia. I never gave much thought to its origins until I sat down to write the post.
A little research tells me that the dish originated in the south in the mid to lat e 1800s. The earliest versions of the recipe consisted of oranges, coconut. and sugar. Pineapples were added once they became more readily available. Interestingly, ambrosia was a Christmas holiday dessert. I'm not sure how it came to be picnic food in my house.
The recipe I'm sharing here is what I grew up on and it's tried and true. I will admit that I've played with ingredients over the years and have included apricots, cherries, and either craisins, or raisins. I still prefer the basic recipe. And since almost every recipe has a story, I'm going there first.
One summer holiday back in New Jersey, I'm pretty sure it was Father's Day, we invited family for a BBQ and our Aunt Virginia offered to bring what she told me is her specialty, ambrosia. I was thrilled as Aunt Virginia was a great cook, it was one less ting for me to do, and I love ambrosia! A little back story here, Aunt Virginia kind of marched to her own drummer, and I'll just leave it at that.
As guests arrived, those who brought dishes to share deposited them in the kitchen for me to manage and were then led to the yard and hopefully made comfortable to wait for the meal to be served. I took the dinner salads out and put the ambrosia and other deserts in the fridge to serve later. About halfway through the meal of salads, burgers, dogs, baked beans etc. I get the wrath of Aunt Virginia because the ambrosia has been overlooked. I explained that it had not in any way been overlooked and that I would be serving it with the rest of the desserts. Well, in Aunt Virginia's world, the ambrosia is served with the meal. I duteously got up and served it so that Aunt Virginia could enjoy it next to her burger. The rest of us had it with dessert. To this day, if someone brings a dish to one of my gatherings that could in any way go in multiple directions (appetizer, entree, dessert) I ask whomever brought it if they have a preference for when I serve it.
Back to the ambrosia recipe...... Sour cream has been the traditional glue that binds it in my family. I've heard of using whipped cream (shelf life is short) as well. Since I've been on the 10% milk-fat yogurt kick, I have substituted that for the sour cream. (If you haven't hear me preach, the high fat plain yogurt has all the satisfying fat with a whole lot more protein which makes the fat much more worth eating). For consistency in the consistency, I thin the yogurt with the reserved pineapple juice.
THE RECIPE:
1 Package shredded Coconut
1 package mini marshmallows
2C +/- 10% milkfat yogurt or the same quantity of our cream
2 cans of chunked pineapple in juice; drained with juice reserved
2 cans of mandarin oranges drained
Combine the fruit and coconut in a large bowl.
Stir in the marshmallows
If using 10% milk-fat yogurt, stir in some of the reserved pineapple juice until the yogurt is thinned to the consistency of sour cream
Stir the yogurt mixture (or sour cream) into the other ingredients and mix well
Store in an air tight container in the fridge for up to 21 week
A little post script here....
I made this recipe for a July 4th BBQ and took home some of the leftovers. My husband and visiting nephew devoured it as an add-on to breakfast. The stuff is versatile......
