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To Cure or Dry Persimmons
One of the U. S. Government Reports (Fla. Bul. No. 71) gives the following quotation from Professor Kizo Tamari (of the Agricultural College, Imperial University, Tokio) as to the Japanese methods of curing the persimmon: “I will tell you how to cure the austere varieties so as to make them edible or change them into sweet ones in the following ways: "First Method-When fairly ripened pick the fruit from the trees, peel off the skin and hang them by threads attached to the stems in a room for two or three weeks. They will then turn brown or black and become soft. You will say that they are the most delicious fruits in the world and dried still further, they will become just like dried figs, or better than figs. Further, pack them in a box in alternate layers with cut rice straw and keep them for a month. Black ones then become covered with a white powder (not mouldy). They then become very sweet, though the sweetness may not be retained through the next summer. "Second Method-Harvesting time being the same as above, the fruits are packed into an empty wine cask (in Japan Sake casks, Japanese rice-wine). This should still be full of alcoholic flavour, or if the flavour be weak, the cask should be sprinkled with wine or brandy or any other spirit. Sherry wine somewhat resembles our Sake.
Sprinkle the fruits very lightly with wine and keep covered air-tight for a week or two according to the temperature and the degree of austereness of the fruit. At the end of the time they become sweet. "Other Methods-The process of sweetening is not merely limited to the above methods, but the fruit may be treated in several other ways; for instance, put new rice straws and dried haulms of sweet potato in about equal proportion in a vat, filling it about one-fifth full. To this add a little wood ashes and pour warm water over them. Stir up the straw so as to get it thoroughly wet. When the water is tepid, put in fruit to fill it one-quarter to one-third full and stir up to wet the fruit and imbed it in the straw. Cover the vat for five or seven days, after which time the fruit will be fit to eat. The fruits thus cured are not as sweet as by the Sake cask process."
Flat and conical Japan persimmons, with the small wild northern persimmon of America. Note difference between Japanese and American as to size
This is astringency removal and drying rather than cooking, and every step turns on one thing: unripe persimmons are full of soluble tannin, which must be made insoluble before the fruit is edible. The methods below are all ways of doing that.
- Which persimmons this applies toThe "austere varieties" are astringent cultivars; the recipe names none, but the Japanese types illustrated and the small American Diospyros virginiana are both covered. Non-astringent Japanese varieties such as Fuyu need none of this and are eaten firm off the tree.
- The hanging method is hoshigakiPeel firm-ripe fruit that still has a short T of stem attached, tie by the stem, and hang where air moves freely and nothing touches. Cool and dry matters more than warm: 50-60F with real air circulation. Two or three weeks is the minimum; four to six is common.
- Hand-massage the fruitThe original omits it, but Japanese practice is to gently squeeze each fruit every few days from about the second week, breaking up the interior pulp. Without this the centre stays wet while the skin case-hardens.
- The white powderNot mould — it is fruit sugars, chiefly glucose and fructose, crystallising on the surface as moisture leaves. Rice straw in the box simply keeps the fruit separated and absorbs the last of the surface damp. Genuine mould is fuzzy, coloured and grows in patches; bloom is a fine even dust.
- The sake-cask methodThis is sawashi-gaki, ethanol treatment. In a home kitchen it means wiping the fruit with a spirit of 35 percent or more, sealing it in an airtight container, and leaving it at room temperature. "A week or two" is right; check at five days. The fruit stays fresh and firm — it is de-astringed, not dried.
- The straw-and-ash vatThe wood ashes and the warm wet straw together create the conditions that render the tannin insoluble, though quite how has long been argued. It works, but it is imprecise and the fruit comes out only partly sweetened, as the text concedes. Wood ash quality varies enormously and can leave an off flavour.
- Storage and yieldA pound of fresh persimmons yields roughly three ounces dried. Finished hoshigaki keep several months wrapped and refrigerated; the note that sweetness fades by the following summer is accurate, as the fruit continues to darken and dry out.
- DonenessA properly dried persimmon is leathery outside and jammy at the core, the texture of a good dried fig. If it is hard all the way through it went too fast; if it stays sticky-wet at the centre after six weeks, the air was too still.
Florida Bulletin No. 71 belongs to a wave of American agricultural literature that followed the introduction of Japanese persimmon varieties in the 1870s, when the USDA and southern state stations were promoting Diospyros kaki to growers in Florida, Georgia and California. Astringent fruit reaching unprepared buyers was a recognised obstacle, and the bulletins accordingly drew on Japanese expertise — hence Professor Tamari of the Imperial University in Tokyo, explaining techniques long established at home. The hanging method he describes is hoshigaki, still made in Japan and now by a handful of Californian growers; the cask method uses alcohol, and a spent sake cask was the obvious vessel to hand. The closing note comparing the size of Japanese and American fruit is a reminder that the native persimmon of the eastern United States was a familiar wild food long before the imports arrived, gathered after frost and baked into puddings, but too small and seedy to compete commercially.