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Watermelon with Rum
Prepare the same as watermelon with brandy, using rum instead of brandy, and proceed as before.
A one-line variant that leans entirely on the preceding entry, which is typical of Oscar's cross-referenced book. What it amounts to is macerated melon, and the technique is simple enough to reconstruct honestly, so long as you know what is being assumed rather than stated.
- The missing parent recipeEverything here depends on "watermelon with brandy," which is not reproduced on this page. A plausible reconstruction is melon cut into cubes or scooped in balls, dusted with sugar, moistened with the spirit, and set on ice until very cold, but the method is inferred rather than recorded here. Treat any fuller version as a reconstruction, not as Oscar's text.
- How much rumNo quantity is given in either entry. For a service-sized bowl, a few tablespoons per quart of melon is enough to be tasted without stripping the fruit; the melon should still taste of melon. Adding more does not speed the maceration, it only masks it.
- Which rumRum in a New York hotel bar of this period was more likely to be a darker, molasses-heavy style -- Jamaican, Demerara or New England -- than the light filtered white rum that dominates now, though lighter Cuban rums were already on the market. A dark or aged rum is probably closer to the flavour the recipe assumes.
- Sugar is optional nowModern watermelons have generally been bred for higher sugar than older varieties. Taste before sugaring; a sugared macerating liquid draws water out of the flesh and can leave the cubes limp.
- Chilling, not soakingAn hour or two on ice is the useful window. Left overnight, the melon collapses and the alcohol turns the juice thin and harsh. This is a cold dish above all — the older kitchens packed the bowl in cracked ice rather than relying on refrigeration.
- Seeds and rindWatermelons of the period were seeded throughout, and the original assumes you will pick them out. A seedless melon removes the only tedious step. Serving the fruit back in a hollowed half-rind, set on ice, was one common hotel presentation, though this entry does not specify it.
- YieldA small watermelon yields roughly 4 to 5 pounds of usable flesh, enough for eight to ten portions as a light end to a meal or as a first course in hot weather.
Oscar Tschirky was not a cook but the Waldorf's celebrated maître d'hôtel, and the 1896 book that carries his name is less a manual than an inventory of what a great American hotel could put in front of a guest — some nine hundred pages of dishes, many of them, like this one, a single line hanging off the entry above. Spirit-soaked melon belonged to the summer repertoire of the period: fruit was expensive out of season, ice was a luxury service in itself, and a chilled melon dressed with brandy, rum, maraschino, kirsch or champagne let a kitchen turn one ingredient into half a dozen menu listings. The variation-by-liquor habit runs through nineteenth-century hotel cookery generally, and it is a reminder that these books were written for staff who already knew the method and only needed to be told which bottle to reach for.