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Macedoine of Fruit
3 peaches 3 pears 1/2 cup diced pineapple 1/2 cup diced watermelon 1 cup raspberries 1/3 cup sugar Pare and slice peaches and pears, cut pineapple and melon in small pieces, mix fruit and sugar, and chill for one hour. Serve in glasses, adding one tablespoon whipped cream to each glass just before serving. A berry or piece of pineapple placed on the cream gives color to the dish.
A cold fruit salad from the era when "macedoine" meant simply a mixture cut to uniform size. Nothing here is difficult; the results depend entirely on fruit quality and on the hour of chilling.
- The hinge is the macerationThe sugar draws juice from the peaches and pears and forms a light syrup that binds the mixture. The recipe's hour is enough; left much longer, the raspberries soften and cloud the syrup.
- Cut size"Macedoine" implies pieces of roughly equal size, cut small. Slicing the peaches and pears as directed works, but dicing them to match the pineapple and melon gives the dish its proper character.
- PineappleThe recipe does not say whether fresh or canned. Canned pineapple will do, drained well, but it is sweeter and softer, so reduce the sugar to taste.
- WatermelonUse flesh from the firm center, seeds removed, and drain it briefly before adding. Wet melon thins the syrup badly.
- Raspberries lastFold them in at the end, or reserve some whole for the garnish, so they do not break up and stain the rest during chilling.
- Whipped creamA tablespoon per glass, added just before serving as the recipe directs. It is a topping, not a dressing, and will slide into the juice fairly quickly.
- YieldAbout six servings in small stemmed glasses, four if served generously.
Macedoine came into English cookery from French kitchens in the nineteenth century, where it described vegetables or fruit cut into small even dice; the name is generally traced to the mixed peoples of Macedonia under Alexander, an etymology repeated in old dictionaries of cookery and impossible to document further. In later American home cookbooks the word had softened into a genteel synonym for fruit cup, and the dish belonged to the summer table, when peaches, pears, raspberries and watermelon overlapped in the market.