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Sherried Tangerine
Cut a slice from across the tops of the tangerines and remove the pulp with a spoon. From these pieces take all the coarse fibre, then mix the pulp with sugar and flavour with sherry. Return the mixture to the shells, chill, and serve.
A stripped-down dessert that depends entirely on the quality of the fruit and how patiently the pulp is cleaned. The original gives no quantities, so the proportions are yours to judge.
- The hinge: remove every membrane"Coarse fibre" means the white pith and the tough segment walls, which turn chewy and bitter once the fruit sits in sugar. Work the pulp apart with your fingers over a bowl so the juice is saved, and discard anything that is not soft flesh.
- QuantitiesNothing is specified. Roughly 1 teaspoon sugar and 1 to 2 teaspoons sherry per tangerine is a reasonable starting point; taste as you go, since tangerine sweetness varies enormously between varieties.
- Which sherryThe recipe says only "sherry". A sweet or medium style — oloroso, cream, or an amontillado — will suit the fruit; a bone-dry fino will read as thin and saline against it. The alcohol is not cooked off, so this is not a dish for children.
- Cutting the shellsThe recipe says only "across the tops"; taking the slice off the stem end tends to leave the fruit sitting more steadily. Tangerine peel is loose and thin, so scoop gently with a small spoon or the fruit will collapse. Trim a flat base if they wobble.
- Chilling timeHalf an hour is enough to cool them through; two hours lets the sugar dissolve fully and the sherry soak in, which is better. Cover them, as citrus in an open refrigerator picks up other smells fast.
- Serving and yieldOne filled shell per person as part of a larger dessert course, two if served alone. They do not keep well past a day — the pulp weeps and the shells soften.
- Serving vesselSet each shell in a small cup, egg cup or bed of crushed ice; an emptied tangerine rarely sits reliably on a flat plate.
Fruit hollowed out and refilled with its own sweetened pulp was a standard turn of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century dessert table, when a great deal of effort went into making food look like an intact version of itself. Oranges, grapefruit and melons all got the same treatment, and a splash of sherry, maraschino or curaçao was the usual way to lift what was otherwise just sugared fruit. Tangerines — a loose-skinned fruit whose naming history is tangled, with the term "tangerine" generally traced to English use around the 1840s, and often said to be associated with Christmas because their season falls in midwinter — were especially suited to it, since the peel separates from the flesh readily and holds its shape. The dish belongs to a chapter of cookery that assumed a well-stocked sideboard.