Grape-Fruit
Cut grape-fruit in half, take out the seeds, loosen the sections and dissolve cream peppermints in the centers instead of using sugar or use a tablespoonful of rum flavoring which is sweetened.
A two-minute breakfast course whose only real technique is the knife work. The point of both variations is to replace granulated sugar with something that dissolves into the juice on its own.
- Loosening the sectionsRun a thin, flexible knife around the inside of the peel, then along each membrane wall so the segments lift free but stay in place. A serrated grapefruit spoon does the same job at the table if you would rather not fuss.
- Cream peppermintsThese are soft fondant mints — the pastel or chalky-white kind, not hard peppermint candy or a starlight mint. Set in the hollow centre they soften into the juice as the fruit is eaten; hard candy will still be sitting there at the end of the course.
- Rum flavoringA rum flavouring sold ready-sweetened; the recipe says as much. Whether the product was alcohol-free is not stated. Modern rum extract is sold unsweetened and is probably stronger, so a full tablespoonful may be harsh: a quarter-teaspoon of extract stirred into a teaspoon of simple syrup is nearer the intended effect, or use a spoonful of actual dark rum if the meal is not breakfast.
- SweetnessThe white-fleshed varieties common in the early twentieth century were generally more acid than today's red-fleshed cultivars, which may be why sugar or a substitute is assumed at all. Taste the fruit first; a ripe Rio Star may need nothing.
- Timing and yieldOne half per person, cut no more than half an hour ahead. Cut surfaces dry and the juice goes flat and bitter if the fruit sits, so chill the whole fruit rather than the prepared halves.
- ServingServe very cold in a shallow bowl or on a plate rimmed to catch juice. Grapefruit set on crushed ice was a common presentation of the period.
Grapefruit arrived on American breakfast tables late — a curiosity in the 1880s and a fashion by the 1910s, once Florida groves and refrigerated rail freight made it cheap enough to eat by the half. By the 1920s and 30s it had become shorthand for a light, modern, faintly reducing sort of breakfast, which is why books of this kind open menu after menu with it and then compete to dress it up: sherry, maraschino, honey, broiled brown sugar, a candied cherry in the middle. The peppermint variation belongs to that decorative impulse, and a sweetened non-alcoholic rum essence would fit the Prohibition kitchen cupboard, where flavouring extracts stood in for spirits in everything from cakes to fruit cups — though the book's date is not established, and the editor's note points out that real vermouth appears a few pages later. Cream peppermints were a familiar American candy-dish sweet, a soft fondant mint served after dinner.