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Fruit Macedoine
1 grapefruit 2 oranges 3 slices pineapple 1/3 cup honey 2 teaspoons cocoanut 6 dates 3/4 cup pineapple juice Cover pulp of grapefruit, oranges and diced pineapple with honey diluted with fruit juice, adding two tablespoons or more to each cup. Garnish with dates and cocoanut and serve very cold. Serves 6.
A macedoine is simply a mixture of fruits cut to similar size, dressed here with honey thinned by juice. Nothing needs cooking, so the work is in the cutting and the chilling.
- CocoanutAn older spelling of coconut; in a book of this vintage it means dried shredded or flaked coconut, which may be sweetened or plain. Two teaspoons is a garnish scattered over the top, not a bulk ingredient; toasting it briefly in a dry pan improves the flavour considerably.
- The honey dressingHoney will not disperse in cold juice if simply spooned in. Whisk the third of a cup of honey with a little of the pineapple juice first, then thin with the rest until it pours freely.
- An ambiguous line"Adding two tablespoons or more to each cup" gives no subject. Read in context it means adding two tablespoons of juice per cup of honey-and-fruit mixture to loosen it, but the original is not explicit and the amount is best judged by eye.
- Grapefruit and orange pulp"Pulp" here means the segments freed of membrane. Cut away the peel and white pith, then slice each segment out of its casing over a bowl so the escaping juice joins the dressing.
- PineappleThree slices means three rings from a fresh or canned pineapple, giving somewhere around a cup and a half once diced, depending on the size of the rings. Canned pineapple packed in juice will also supply the 3/4 cup of juice the recipe calls for.
- DatesStone them and check; supermarket dates are sometimes sold pitted, sometimes not. Halved or quartered lengthwise they sit better on top than whole.
- Chilling"Serve very cold" is the point of the dish. Assemble at least an hour ahead and refrigerate, which also lets the honey draw juice from the citrus. Longer than a few hours and the grapefruit turns bitter and the coconut goes limp, so add the garnish at the last moment.
- YieldSix as written. Stemmed glasses or hollowed grapefruit halves suit it, though the recipe says nothing about how it should be served.
Macedoine came into English kitchens from French professional cookery, where it means a mixture of vegetables or fruits cut into uniform small pieces; the name is generally traced to Macedonia and its reputation as a patchwork of peoples, a pun cooks have repeated for two centuries without documenting. A fruit macedoine of this kind served as an opener or a closer for a light company meal, and year-round shipments of Florida citrus and canned Hawaiian pineapple made one easy to assemble. The choice of honey rather than sugar syrup, and the small dry garnish of coconut and dates, may reflect an interest in "natural" sweetening and in dishes that need no stove, though the recipe itself says nothing of the sort.