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Pomelo with Grapes
A pretty addition is made by filling the core-hollow first with a little sugar and sherry, then with white grapes (halved and seeded), or candied cherries, angelica (cut fine), and shredded pineapple. Where these fruits are combined the colour effect is charming: the red of the cherries; the green of the angelica, with the white and yellow.
A garnish rather than a formal recipe: it assumes a halved citrus fruit with the fibrous centre cut out, ready to be filled. Everything hangs on the fruit being cold and the filling being cut small enough to sit level in the hollow.
- "Pomelo" means grapefruitIn English cookbooks of this period pomelo (also pommelo, pomelow) is the grapefruit, not the larger thick-skinned pummelo sold under that name today. Use a grapefruit, halved crosswise, with the tough central core and membrane cut out to leave a cavity.
- The core-hollowLoosen each segment from its membrane with a curved grapefruit knife before filling, or the fruit is unpleasant to eat with a spoon. The hollow left by removing the core holds roughly a tablespoon or two per half.
- Sherry and sugar quantitiesNone are given. A teaspoon of sugar and two teaspoons of sherry per half is in keeping; a medium or cream sherry suits the fruit better than a dry fino. Add them first so the sugar has time to dissolve into the juice.
- White grapes"White" here means green table grapes. Halving and seeding was necessary when seeded varieties were the norm; modern seedless varieties need only halving, and small ones can go in whole.
- AngelicaCandied angelica stem, bright green and faintly musky, was a standard confectioner's line and is now sold mainly by baking suppliers and Italian delicatessens. Nothing matches its colour honestly; candied citron or chopped green glacé cherries stand in for appearance only.
- PineappleShredded fresh pineapple contains bromelain, which will not harm the fruit but turns any dairy garnish bitter. Canned pineapple, being cooked, does not.
- Chill and serveFill no more than an hour ahead and keep cold; the sugar draws juice out of the grapes and the filling slackens if it stands. One half per person, served at the start of a meal or at breakfast, with a teaspoon.
Grapefruit reached British and American tables as a fashionable novelty in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s still hesitated over what to call it — pomelo, pommelo, shaddock and grape fruit all appear. Its accepted place was at the opening of a meal or at breakfast, halved, cored, sugared and often laced with sherry, and the elaborations here are typical of the way a plain fruit course was dressed up for company. Candied angelica, the green-dyed stem of Angelica archangelica, was then a routine confectioner's stock item used chiefly for colour, as it is used here; its near-disappearance from ordinary shops is the main reason this arrangement now looks harder to reproduce than it was.