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Grapefruit and Pineapple Frappe
1 grapefruit Malaga grapes 1/2 cup chopped pineapple 1/2 cup pineapple juice It is desirable to have pieces of pulp as large as possible. To do this best remove grapefruit skin in quarters; discard all thick white skin. Separate carefully into sections. Cut slit in membrane covering each section. Remove membrane and seeds. Break in large pieces. Mix with an equal quantity of Malaga grapes, halved and seeded, chopped pineapple and pineapple juice. Place in freezer and pack in ice and salt for an hour, or till partly frozen. This is good to serve with any fish dish.
A first-course frappe rather than a dessert: barely sweetened fruit frozen only to a slush, meant to be spooned before or alongside fish. The whole point is texture, so the handling of the grapefruit matters more than anything else.
- The hinge: intact pulpPeeling in quarters, then slitting the membrane and lifting the section out whole, gives large glossy pieces instead of shredded fibre. Working over a bowl catches the juice, which can go into the mix in place of some of the pineapple juice.
- "Place in freezer""freezer" here most likely means the metal can of a hand-crank ice-cream freezer, which would explain why it is then packed in ice and salt. A modern equivalent is a shallow metal pan in the household freezer, stirred with a fork every 20 minutes.
- Ice and saltRoughly three parts crushed ice to one part rock salt by volume brings the brine well below freezing. An hour in that packing gives a coarse, half-frozen slush, not a solid block; if it does set hard, break it up with a fork before serving.
- Malaga grapesA large, firm, seeded green table grape once common in American markets. Red globe or any large firm seedless grape works; halve them so they take up the juice.
- "An equal quantity"Equal to the grapefruit pulp, which from one grapefruit runs about 1 to 1 1/2 cups. That puts the grapes in the same range, roughly 6 to 9 oz before halving.
- PineappleFresh or canned in juice both suit. Canned in heavy syrup will push this toward dessert sweetness, which works against its role beside fish; drain it well if that is what you have.
- No sugarThe recipe adds none, and the tartness is deliberate. Taste before freezing and add at most a spoonful of sugar or honey, dissolved in the pineapple juice, since sugar also softens the final texture.
- Yield and serviceRoughly 3 to 4 cups, enough for four to six small glasses. Serve in chilled stemmed glasses immediately; a frappe softens quickly at room temperature.
The frappe belongs to a long stretch of American menu convention in which a lightly frozen fruit ice appeared partway through a formal dinner, either as a palate cleanser between heavy courses or, as here, alongside the fish. A household serving this needed an ice-cream freezer, or at least ice and rock salt to pack it in, and a cook willing to section grapefruit by hand. Malaga grapes, named for the Spanish port they shipped from, were a standard winter luxury in American fruit stores in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, packed and stored in barrels of cork dust or sawdust and sold well past the domestic grape season, which is why a mid-winter menu could call for them alongside grapefruit and canned pineapple.