Science in the Kitchen / A Scientific Treatise On Food Substances and Their Dietetic Properties, Together with a Practical Explanation of the Principles of Healthful Cookery, and a Large Number of Original, Palatable, and Wholesome Recipes

by E. E. Kellogg

The Pomegranate.—This fruit has been cultivated in Asia from earliest antiquity, and is still quite generally grown in most tropical climes. In the Scriptures it is mentioned with the vine, fig, and olive, among the pleasant fruits of the promised land. It is about the size of a large peach, of a fine golden color, with a rosy tinge on one side. The rind is thick and leathery. The central portion is composed of little globules of pulp and seeds inclosed in a thin membrane, each seed being about the size of a red currant. It is sub-acid, and slightly bitter in taste. The rind is strongly astringent, and often used as a medicine.

The Grape.—Undoubtedly the grape was one of the first fruits eaten by mankind, and one highly valued from antiquity down to the present time. Although this fruit is often sadly perverted in the manufacture of wine, when rightly used it is one of the most excellent of all fruits. The skins and seeds are indigestible and should be rejected, but the fresh, juicy pulp is particularly wholesome and refreshing. Several hundred varieties of the grape are cultivated. Some particularly sweet varieties are made into raisins, by exposure to the sun or to artificial heat. Sun-dried grapes make the best raisins. The so-called English or Zante currant belongs to the grape family, and is the dried fruit of a vine which grows in the Ionian Islands and yields a very small berry. The name currant, as applied to these fruits, is a corruption of the word Corinth, where the fruit was formerly grown.

The Gooseberry.—The gooseberry probably derives its name from gorse or goss, a prickly shrub that grows wild in thickets and on hillsides in Europe, Asia, and America. It was known to the ancients, and is mentioned in the writings of Theocritus and Pliny. Gooseberries were a favorite dish with some of the emperors, and were extensively cultivated in gardens during the Middle Ages. The gooseberry is a wholesome and agreeable fruit, and by cultivation may be brought to a high state of perfection in size and flavor.

The Currant.—This fruit derives its name from its resemblance to the small grapes of Corinth, sometimes called Corinthus, and is indigenous to America, Asia, and Europe. The fruit is sharply acid, though very pleasant to the taste. Cultivation has produced white currants from the red, and in a distinct species of the fruit grown in Northern Europe and Russia, the currants are black or yellow.

The Whortleberry and Blueberry.—These are both species of the same fruit, which grows in woods and waste places in the North of Europe and America. Of the latter species there are two varieties, the high-bush and the low-bush, which are equally palatable. The fruit is very sweet and pleasant to the taste, and is one of the most wholesome of all berries.

The Cranberry.—A German writer of note insists that the original name of this fruit was cram-berry, because after dinner, when one was filled with other food, such was its pleasant and seductive flavor that he could still "cram" quite a quantity thereof, in defiance of all dietetic laws. Other writers consider the name a corruption of craneberry, so called because it is eagerly sought after by the cranes and other birds which frequent the swamps and marshes where it chiefly grows. The fruit is extremely acid, and is highly valued for sauces and jellies. Cranberries are among the most convenient fruits for keeping. Freezing does not seem to hurt them, and they may be kept frozen all winter, or in water without freezing, in the cellar, or other cool places, for a long period.

The Strawberry.—The flavor of antiquity rests upon the wild strawberry. Its fruit was peddled by itinerant dealers about the streets of ancient Grecian and Roman cities. Virgil sings of it in pastoral poems, and Ovid mentions it in words of praise. The name by which the fruit was known to the Greeks indicates its size; with the Latins its name was symbolic of its perfume. The name strawberry probably came from the old Saxon streawberige, either from some resemblance of the stems to straw, of from the fact that the berries have the appearance when growing of being strewn upon the ground. In olden times, children strung the berries upon straws, and sold so many "straws of berries" for a penny, from which fact it is possible the name may have been derived. The strawberry is indigenous to the temperate regions of both the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, but it seems to have been matured in gardens, only within the last two centuries.

The Raspberry.—This fruit grows in both a wild and a cultivated state. It derives its name from the rough rasps or spines with which the bushes are covered. Among the ancients it was called "the bramble of Mt. Ida," because it was abundant upon that mountain. It is a hardy fruit, found in most parts of the world, and is of two special varieties, the black and the red.