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Fruits: Fresh, Preserved, and Canned
RUITS are usually at their best when served ripe and F in season; however, a few cannot be taken in their raw state, and still others are rendered more easy of digestion by cooking. The methods employed are stewing and baking. Fruit should be cooked in earthen or granite ware utensils, and silver or wooden spoons should be employed for stirring. It must be remembered that all fruits contain one or more acids, and when exposed to air and brought in contact with an iron or tin surface, a poisonous compound may be formed.
How to Prepare Strawberries for Serving 1. Pick over strawberries, place in colander, pour over cold water, drain thoroughly, hull, and turn into dish. Serve with powdered sugar and cream. 2. Pick over selected strawberries, place in colander, pour over cold water, and drain thoroughly. Press powdered sugar into cordial glasses. Remove from glasses on centres of fruit plates. Arrange twelve berries around each mound of sugar.
Berries served in this way should not be hulled.
How to Prepare Cantaloupes and Muskmelons for Serving Canteloupes and muskmelons should be very ripe and thoroughly chilled in ice box before being prepared for serving. Wipe melons, - if small, cut in halves lengthwise; if larger, cut in sections, and remove seeds and stringy portion. If one-half is served as a portion, put in cavity one tablespoon crushed ice. Serve with salt or powdered sugar. How to Prepare Grapes for Serving Put bunches in colander and pour over cold water, drain, chill, and arrange on serving dish. Imperfect grapes, as well as those under-ripe or over-ripe, should be removed. Garnish with grape leaves, if at hand.
Ways of Preparing Oranges for Serving 1. Wipe orange and cut in halves crosswise. Place onehalf on a fruit plate, having an orange spoon or teaspoon on plate at right of fruit. 2. Peel an orange and remove as much of the white portion as possible. Remove pulp by sections, which may be accomplished by using a sharp knife and cutting pulp from tough portion first on one side of section, then on the other. Should there be any white portion of skin remaining on pulp it should be cut off. Arrange sections on glass dish or fruit plate. If the orange is a seeded one, remove seeds. 3. Remove peel from an orange in such a way that there remains a one-half inch band of peel equal distance from stem and blossom end. Cut band, separate sections, and arrange around a mould of sugar.
How to Prepare Grape Fruit for Serving Wipe grape fruit and cut in halves crosswise. With a small, sharp-pointed knife make a cut separating pulp from skin around entire circumference; then make cuts separating pulp from tough portion which divides fruit into sections. Remove tough portion in one piece, which may be accomplished by one cutting with scissors at stem or blossom end close to skin. Sprinkle fruit pulp left in grape fruit skin generously with sugar. Let stand ten minutes, and serve very cold. Place on fruit plate and garnish with a candied cherry.
These are serving instructions rather than cooked dishes, and most of the technique still stands. A few of the assumptions behind it — about metal, sugar and the fruit itself — have moved on.
- The iron and tin warningFruit acids do react with bare iron and with the exposed seams of old tinned ware, giving metallic off-flavors and dark staining; "poisonous compound" overstates it. Stainless steel, enamel and glass are all fine, and "granite ware" here means the speckled enamelware pan, not stone.
- Powdered sugarIn this book powdered sugar is a fine-grained white sugar, closer to today's superfine or caster sugar than to modern confectioners' sugar, which contains cornstarch. Superfine dissolves cleanly on wet berries and packs into a mould in a cordial glass; confectioners' sugar will taste chalky.
- Wash melons before cuttingThe rind is the hinge here. Cantaloupe skin harbors bacteria that a knife drags straight into the flesh, so scrub the netted surface under running water and dry it before cutting — "wipe melons" is not enough by current practice. Cut melon should go back into the refrigerator, not sit out.
- Cantaloupe versus muskmelonWhat American markets sell as cantaloupe is a netted muskmelon; the true European cantaloupe, with a hard warty rind, is rarely seen here. The instruction applies to any ripe orange- or green-fleshed melon.
- Crushed ice in the cavityA tablespoon of ice in a half melon adds chill at the table, but it waters the flesh as it melts. A melon held at refrigerator temperature for several hours needs nothing in the hollow.
- Hulling strawberriesRinse before hulling, as directed — a hulled berry soaks up water through the cut. The second method leaves the hulls on deliberately so the berry can be held by the stem and dipped in the sugar mound; buy berries with fresh green calyxes if you plan to serve them that way.
- GrapefruitFreeing the segments with a knife and lifting out the central core is still the neatest method, and a curved grapefruit knife does it faster. Ten minutes with sugar draws out enough juice to pool in the shell. Grapefruit interacts with a long list of prescription drugs, worth knowing before serving it to guests.
- Serving equipmentThe orange spoon called for is a narrow, pointed teaspoon, sometimes serrated at the tip; a grapefruit spoon substitutes. Silver or wooden spoons were specified because silver does not react with fruit acid the way iron does.
This chapter opens the fruit section of a book written when a separate fruit course, served at the start of breakfast or the end of dinner, was a fixture of well-to-do American tables — hence the attention to plating, garnishes and the correct spoon rather than to cooking. Grapefruit is the telling entry: it was still relatively unfamiliar in the northern states in the 1890s, shipped north from Florida groves in the same era that refrigerated rail transport was bringing out-of-season strawberries and California grapes within reach, and the careful step-by-step for sectioning it suggests many readers had never handled one. The warning about iron and tin reflects the real state of kitchen equipment then, when pans were commonly cast iron or tin-plated sheet metal whose coating wore through at the seams; enameled "granite ware" was the modern, non-reactive alternative, and stainless steel was not yet in domestic use.