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Persimmon
In serving the uncooked Kaki send it to the table with sharp-pointed spoons with which both to pierce quickly the thin skin and eat the pulp. Or it may be peeled carefully, the pulp removed and mixed lightly with orange juice and sugar or with whipped cream-this, before serving. Tapioca and sago, or gelatine already cooked, may be added with the whipped white of an egg for a dessert, but in such case the puddings should be made rather thick and partially cooled before pouring over the persimmon, in order that the latter may not become too juicy with the warmth and make the dessert watery. Frozen persimmons are very delicious-peeled and frozen whole with sugar and orange juice, or mashed with syrup and lemon juice as an ice, or added at the last moment to plain ice-cream.
These are serving directions rather than a fixed formula, and everything depends on the fruit itself. Get the ripeness right and the rest is assembly.
- Ripeness is the hinge"Kaki" is the Japanese persimmon, Diospyros kaki. Astringent varieties such as Hachiya must be soft to the point of collapse, the skin translucent and the pulp like jelly; eaten firm they are mouth-puckeringly tannic. Non-astringent Fuyu types can be used while still crisp, but they give a much less spoonable pulp than the writer assumes.
- Sharp-pointed spoonsA grapefruit spoon with a serrated tip does exactly what is described here: pierces the skin and scoops the pulp without tearing the fruit apart. A demitasse spoon works if the fruit is very ripe.
- Tapioca and sagoBoth mean the old pearl or flake starches, cooked in liquid until clear, not instant tapioca. Sago is now sold mainly in Asian and Indian groceries; small pearl tapioca substitutes directly.
- "Gelatine already cooked"That is, a gelatin dessert base already bloomed, dissolved and cooled to the point of thickening. Keep it separate from the fruit until the last moment: cold pulp folded into a partly set base holds better.
- Why the pudding must be thick and coolThis is the instruction to take literally. Persimmon pulp is very wet and it thins on warming, so a loose warm pudding poured over it slumps into juice. Chill the base until it mounds on a spoon, then fold the fruit in.
- The raw egg whiteThe whipped white here is never cooked. If you want the lightness, use pasteurized whites or whipped cream instead, particularly for anyone elderly, pregnant or immune-compromised.
- Freezing wholeA whole peeled persimmon dusted with sugar and orange juice needs several hours in the freezer and then ten to fifteen minutes at room temperature before serving, or it is glassy rather than creamy. Frozen and thawed Hachiya pulp is one of the best forms of the fruit.
- As an iceMashed pulp with syrup and lemon juice churns well. Persimmon has little acid of its own, so the lemon is doing real work and should not be left out.
- QuantitiesNone are given anywhere. Reckon one large ripe persimmon per person served plain, and half a cup of pulp per portion when it goes into a pudding or ice cream.
Persimmon here means the Asian fruit, not the small native American Diospyros virginiana that country cooks had long gathered after frost. Japanese kaki varieties reached the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century — introductions are generally traced to seeds and grafted trees brought back in the wake of the Perry expedition and to later Department of Agriculture distributions — and by 1900 they were being grown commercially in California and the Gulf states. That newness explains the tone of this entry: the author is not giving a formula so much as teaching a public that mostly did not know the fruit how to approach it, which end of the spoon to use, and how to keep its considerable juiciness from ruining a pudding. The fondness for gelatin, tapioca and sago moulds, and for anything that could be frozen, is entirely of its period, when household ice was cheap enough to make frozen desserts an ordinary ambition.