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Stewed Pomegranates
Cut into halves about four pomegranates and take out all of the grains, placing the small ones in a cloth and pressing out all of the juice into a saucepan, mix in with it an equal quantity of water, and about four ounces of loaf-sugar, stirring continually over a slow fire until it has become quite thick, and then remove from the fire to cool; arrange the pomegranates in a dish and pour over the syrup, sprinkling in a few drops of essence of orange-water, put in a few small pieces of ice, and serve.
A cold fruit compote of the sort Oscar's kitchen sent out between courses or as a light dessert. The instructions are terse but the method is sound; two or three things need translating.
- "Grains" are arilsThe seeds in their juice sacs. Halve the fruit, then work the arils out over a bowl to catch what spills. Set aside the plump, whole ones for the serving dish and reserve the small, damaged or pale ones for juicing.
- Pressing the juiceA doubled square of muslin or a jelly bag twisted over a bowl works better than a sieve, and keeps out the bitter white pith. Four pomegranates give several cups of arils in all; how much you keep whole for the dish and how much you press depends on how many small ones you find.
- Loaf-sugarSugar sold in hard cones or blocks, broken up and weighed. Four ounces of granulated sugar, a little over half a cup, is the equivalent; no substitution beyond that is needed.
- "Quite thick" means a syrup, not a caramelEqual parts juice and water with the sugar should be reduced to a light syrup that coats a spoon, at a bare simmer, watching it rather than timing it. Take it further and it will set hard on the cold fruit.
- Essence of orange-waterOrange-flower water, still sold in Middle Eastern and baking sections. It is potent: a few drops is the correct dose, and a teaspoon will make the dish taste of soap. Add it off the heat so the aroma survives.
- The iceSmall pieces of ice in the dish were a nineteenth-century way of serving a dish cold at table. Chilling the syrup and fruit thoroughly, in a glass bowl over ice if you like, gives the same effect without watering down the syrup.
- YieldRoughly four to six small servings in glasses or shallow coupes. Best eaten soon after dressing, as the arils soften once the syrup is on them.
Pomegranates reached American tables from a mix of sources, and by the late nineteenth century they were grown commercially in California and the American South, coming into season in autumn. The technique here is much older than the hotel. Cooking down pomegranate juice is a long-established practice in Persian, Turkish and Levantine kitchens, where the reduced juice, unsweetened in the case of pomegranate molasses, long predates any hotel recipe, and the finish with orange-flower water points the same direction, since distilled flower waters were the standard perfume for sweets throughout that region long before French pastry adopted them. Whether the dish came to the Waldorf by way of a French chef's repertoire or by way of the Mediterranean directly is not recorded, but the pairing of pomegranate and orange blossom is traditional enough that no single origin can be claimed for it.