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Grape Fruit for Breakfast
At night halve the fruit across, then with thin, sharp knife remove upper part of core and seeds. In the hollow thus made place a tablespoonful of sugar and set in cool spot till morning. Serve without further preparation, but with sharp-pointed spoons.
A method rather than a recipe: the sugar draws juice overnight and softens the membranes, so the fruit needs nothing at table. A few points on what has changed since it was written.
- "Grape fruit" is grapefruitThe two-word spelling was standard in American books into the 1910s. One medium fruit, halved, serves two.
- The core matters more than the seedsModern grapefruit is usually seedless, but the tough white central column is still there. Cutting it out is what makes the hollow that holds the sugar, so do it whether or not there are seeds to remove.
- Sugar quantityA tablespoon per half is generous by current taste, and several modern varieties — Ruby Red, Star Ruby, Oro Blanco (itself a grapefruit-pomelo hybrid) — are generally sweeter and less bitter than the pale, sharp fruit of 1900. A teaspoon or two is usually enough.
- "A cool spot" means the refrigeratorWritten for a larder or cellar. Refrigerate the halves overnight, loosely covered so they do not pick up other smells.
- Cut the segments freeThe original assumes a sharp-pointed grapefruit spoon, which is designed to cut as it scoops. Without one, run a paring or serrated knife around the inside of the peel and between each membrane wall before the sugar goes on; the fruit then lifts out cleanly with an ordinary teaspoon.
- TimingOvernight is not required. Two or three hours in the refrigerator gives most of the syrup and keeps the flesh firmer.
- A note on medicationGrapefruit interferes with the metabolism of a long list of common drugs, including several statins and calcium-channel blockers. Worth knowing before serving it daily at breakfast.
Grapefruit reached American tables late. It was a West Indian curiosity — generally traced to Barbados in the eighteenth century, as a chance cross involving the sweet orange and the pomelo — and commercial Florida groves only became significant in the 1880s and 1890s. That is roughly when it starts appearing in household books as a breakfast course. The overnight sugaring may reflect the fruit of the day: the seedy, unimproved varieties were sharper than modern ones, and pointed spoons for eating it were being sold in this period.