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Muskmelons
The best muskmelons are now undoubtedly raised in the tablelands of Colorado, having almost entirely superseded those of New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland. The Jenny Lind, Rocky Ford, Nutmeg and Christiana are considered the best. Place three medium muskmelons in the ice box over night, and just before serving cut them in even halves. Carefully remove all spongy parts and seeds, place them on a hors d'oeuvres dish and serve with powdered sugar, salt and pepper, separately.
Barely a recipe and entirely a matter of selection and temperature — the only work is choosing ripe fruit and getting it properly cold.
- The hinge is ripeness, not techniqueNothing here can rescue an underripe melon. Look for a smooth, slightly sunken scar where the stem separated cleanly, a faint netted skin with no green ground colour, and a sweet smell at the blossom end. A melon that must be cut from the vine will never sweeten off it.
- Ice box means refrigeratorAn overnight chill is right; a modern refrigerator at about 40F is colder than most ice boxes would have run. Melon and other foods exchange odours readily, so if you halve it in advance, cover it; whole melons are best left uncut until just before serving, as the recipe directs.
- The named varietiesJenny Lind, Nutmeg and Christiana are heirlooms now found mainly through seed catalogues and farmers' markets. Rocky Ford survives as a Colorado regional name rather than a single cultivar. Any well-grown netted cantaloupe stands in; the small, deeply ribbed Jenny Lind type is closest in size to what is described.
- Muskmelon vs. cantaloupeIn American usage of this period muskmelon means the orange-fleshed netted melon sold today as cantaloupe. The true European cantaloupe, with a rough warty rind, is a different fruit and rarely seen in the United States.
- Hors d'oeuvres dishSimply a shallow serving platter, often compartmented, used for the small cold dishes that opened a meal. A rimmed plate or tray works; the point is that the halves sit level and do not tip.
- Salt and pepper are not a mistakeSalt sharpens perceived sweetness and pepper picks up the melon's musky note. Sugar, salt and pepper turn up as melon accompaniments in American cookbooks of the period, as here. Serve all three condiments separately, as written, and let people choose.
- Yield and servingThree melons give six halves — six servings as a first course. Cut a thin slice from the base of each half so it does not rock on the plate.
Melon at the start of a meal was an American habit by the late nineteenth century, and this entry reads as much like market reporting as cookery: the writer is recording the moment when irrigated fields on the western tablelands displaced the Atlantic seaboard as the country's melon supplier. Rocky Ford, in the Arkansas River valley, built its reputation in the 1890s on high-altitude days, cool nights and rail refrigeration that could put ripe fruit in eastern cities — an advantage New Jersey and Delaware growers, closer but unable to match it. Jenny Lind, often said to be named for the Swedish soprano who toured America in 1850, and Nutmeg are older market-garden varieties whose small size suited exactly this service, one half per person. The salt-and-pepper accompaniment, now largely forgotten, appears in American cookbooks throughout the period and reflects a time when melon was treated as a savoury opener rather than dessert.