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Grape Fruit for Luncheon
Prepare in same manner as for "Breakfast," letting stand but six hours, however, and on ice, and adding tablespoonful of sherry to the sugar in each half of the pomelo. Or the pulp may be entirely removed from the shell and skin and served in the clean shells with just a little sugar, or in sherbet glasses or in individual glass dishes set in outer cups or bowls containing shaved ice. If served on the dishes the sections may be left whole; if in glasses the pulp shredded. There are many ways of varying this. Another method more suitable for a dessert or other than introductory course is the following:
A serving formula rather than a cooked dish, and it assumes you have already read the author's "Grape Fruit for Breakfast" entry immediately preceding it. The essentials are halving the fruit, freeing the sections from their membranes with a curved knife, sugaring, and letting it macerate cold.
- Pomelo means the grapefruitIn turn-of-the-century American cookbooks "pomelo" and "grape fruit" are used interchangeably for the same fruit. It is not the large thick-skinned Asian pummelo sold under that name today, which is drier and sweeter and would not sit well in this treatment.
- The maceration is the pointThe maceration -- the recipe shortens the stand: 'but six hours,' and on ice, against the longer stand given for the breakfast version. Six hours in the cold with sugar and sherry will draw juice and soften the sections; started in the morning it is ready for a one o'clock luncheon, and cut citrus is best kept covered, since it takes on other flavours quickly.
- "On ice" means the refrigerator"On ice" -- most likely the icebox, though it may mean the dish set literally in ice; either way the fruit is to be served thoroughly cold. A modern refrigerator runs colder than an icebox, so the fruit will be firmer; let it stand a few minutes at room temperature before serving if you want the aroma.
- A tablespoonful of sherryA generous pour for half a fruit. A dry or medium amontillado suits the acidity better than a cream sherry, which pushes the whole thing toward candy. The alcohol does not cook off, so this is not a course for everyone at the table.
- Cutting the sections freeThis page gives no cutting instruction; it refers the reader back to the "Breakfast" entry. The usual method is to loosen each section from the surrounding membrane walls so it lifts out clean with a spoon.
- Shredded versus wholeThe author gives the rule without a reason: sections may be left whole when served in dishes, the pulp shredded when served in glasses. The likely explanation is simply the shape of the vessel.
- Shaved ice underneathThe outer bowl of shaved ice is presentation and temperature control together, and it works. A chilled glass set in a slightly larger bowl of crushed ice will hold the fruit cold through a long first course.
- YieldHalf a grapefruit per person, so one fruit serves two. The recipe gives no sugar quantity beyond "the sugar" and, for the plain version, "just a little"; sweeten to taste.
Grapefruit arrived on American tables late and quickly. Commercial groves in Florida were still young in the 1880s, and by the first decade of the twentieth century a chilled half grapefruit had become the fashionable opening to both breakfast and luncheon in city households and hotel dining rooms, and a fruit-cookery book of this period devotes several consecutive entries to it. The habit of splitting the treatment by meal, plain sugar at breakfast and sugar with sherry at luncheon, suggests a sense of what each meal permitted, and the fortified wine also tells you something about the era's tastes. The name "grape fruit" is traditionally explained by the way the fruit hangs in clusters on the tree, and the competing common name pomelo, used here as a straight synonym, was still current in print.