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Grape Fruit Salads
Pomelo may be served in several forms of salad, but in all cases the pulp must be perfectly shredded from the white "rag," as the slightest particle will give a bitter taste. Serve the fruit on young, crisp lettuce or tender cabbageheart with French dressing or mayonnaise. Chopped celery or nuts (chopped, whole or halved, depending upon the kind of nut) or some other fruit, as cherries or currants, make toothsome additions. A little sugar may be sprinkled over the fruit before adding dressing. 1 GRAPE FRUIT MARMALADE No. I Remove the yellow rind with a sharp knife; place in brine and boil till soft and translucent. Then drain and soak in fresh, cold water for two hours, after which scrape off part of the white pulp and cut in thin slices. Meantime have the white rag and seeds removed from the fruit-pulp and place latter with juice in a separate vessel. When the rind is sufficiently freshened add to it the pulp, with equal proportion of sugar, and boil thirty minutes or until it jells.
GRAPE FRUIT MARMALADE No. 2 Peel off the yellow rind and chop or cut in fruit-chopper. Bring to a boil in rather strong brine, then drain and boil in fresh water. Should this not be sufficient to remove bitter taste repeat the process. Meantime pare off the heaviest white tissue remaining and cut fruit in half. Remove cores, then slice lengthwise and place in granite vesssel, bringing to a boil. When the rind is ready add the fruit to it and cook until rind is translucent and soft. Then add pound for pound of sugar and cook until thick.
Three related preparations: a grapefruit salad and two marmalades built on brined peel. The salad is a matter of assembly; the marmalades hinge entirely on how thoroughly you tame the peel.
- Pomelo means grapefruit hereIn American books of this period "pomelo" and "grape fruit" are used interchangeably for Citrus paradisi. It is not the larger, thicker-skinned pummelo (C. maxima) sold in Asian markets today, which behaves quite differently in a preserve.
- The rag is the whole pointThe bitterness lives in the albedo, the white pith and the membrane walls, which carry naringin. Segment the fruit over a bowl, cutting between the membranes with a thin knife, and pull away every shred of white before the fruit meets dressing.
- How salty is "brine"The strength is not given, and "rather strong brine" in No. 2 is genuinely ambiguous. The salt is there to draw out bitterness, not to season; whatever strength you use, the peel needs the fresh-water soak and at least one change of boiling water afterward, and it should taste of citrus rather than salt before sugar goes near it.
- Granite vesselGraniteware is enamelled steel. Any non-reactive pan works; avoid bare aluminium or unlined copper, which discolour citrus and can pick up a metallic edge from the acid.
- Pound for poundBoth recipes want sugar equal in weight to the prepared fruit and peel. Weigh, do not measure by volume. Grapefruit is high in pectin in the peel and membranes, so no added pectin is needed.
- Testing the set"Boil thirty minutes or until it jells" means the second clause. Setting point is 220F at sea level, or use a chilled saucer: a spoonful should wrinkle when pushed after a minute in the freezer.
- StorageNeither recipe says anything about jars or sealing, which was assumed knowledge. Treat the finished marmalade as fresh: refrigerate and use within a few weeks, or follow current water-bath canning guidance for jar size and processing time.
- Yield and servingNeither recipe states quantities, so yield depends wholly on how much fruit you start with. Dress the salad just before it goes to the table so the sugar does not draw out juice and thin the dressing.
- A note on grapefruit and medicationNot a period concern, but grapefruit interacts with a long list of prescription drugs. Worth knowing before you make three jars of concentrated peel and juice.
Grapefruit was a novelty crop turned commercial success in the decades either side of 1900, when Florida growers pushed it from a curiosity into a breakfast staple, and cookbooks of the era hurried to find things to do with it beyond halving and sugaring. That explains the slightly instructional tone here: the writer assumes the reader has met the fruit but does not yet trust it, hence the insistence on the "rag" and the repeated brining. The marmalade technique itself is older than the fruit's American vogue, and is often said to follow Scottish and English bitter-orange practice, where boiling the peel in changes of water to draw out bitterness before adding sugar was standard; grapefruit simply needed more of the same treatment. The salad, meanwhile, belongs to the American fashion for fruit-and-mayonnaise combinations that dominated the period's luncheon tables, an arrangement that reads oddly now but was then the mark of a modern hostess.