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Frozen Pomelo
Make as for Frozen Oranges, using more sugar and some orange juice.
A one-line cross-reference that assumes you have already read the entry for Frozen Oranges. The instruction is really about balance: grapefruit juice is more acid and more bitter than orange, so it takes more sugar and a softening measure of orange juice.
- "Pomelo" means grapefruitIn American cookbooks of this era pomelo almost always denotes the grapefruit, then also sold as "pomelo" or "shaddock." The true pummelo (Citrus maxima), with its thick pith and dry, mild segments, would not behave the same way in a frozen dish and is not what is meant here.
- The method being referred toFrozen orange recipes of the period commonly follow one pattern: sweeten strained juice with sugar or sugar syrup, freeze it, and serve it either in the emptied fruit shells or in glasses. Read the Frozen Oranges entry first, since this line supplies only the two adjustments.
- How much more sugarThe original gives no figure. As a working ratio, a sorbet holds together at roughly 4 to 6 oz sugar per pint of juice; grapefruit needs the upper end. Under-sweetened citrus ice freezes into a hard, granular block because sugar is what keeps the texture spoonable.
- Why the orange juiceIt is there to blunt acid and bitterness, not for volume. The original gives no proportion; something on the order of one part orange to three or four parts grapefruit is a reasonable starting point.
- Strain the juiceGrapefruit membrane and pith carry naringin, and grapefruit juice tends to grow more bitter as it stands. Press the juice, strain out pulp and seeds, sweeten, and freeze the same day.
- Freezing without an ice-cream freezerPour into a shallow metal pan, freeze, and scrape and stir with a fork every 30 minutes until you have a coarse granita, about 3 to 4 hours. A machine gives a smoother sorbet; either suits the period intent.
- Serving in the shellsHalve the fruit, remove the flesh with a grapefruit knife, and freeze the empty cups while the ice sets so they do not melt it on contact. Two large grapefruit and one orange yield about a pint, enough for four small servings.
Frozen citrus often appeared in the late-Victorian and Edwardian dinner as a small, barely sweet ice served between courses or opening the meal, meant to refresh rather than to finish it. The grapefruit's appearance here suggests how new it still was to American tables. Commercial Florida groves were only beginning to move the fruit north in quantity in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, and cookbooks of the time vary between the names pomelo, shaddock and grapefruit. Its sharpness was treated as a virtue to be managed rather than removed, which is what this one-line instruction does: more sugar to make it palatable, orange juice to soften the edge, and no further ceremony.