RIPE FRUIT.
————————
The sight of the fruit-dish or basket upon the breakfast table has become so common of late years that its absence, rather than its presence, in the season of ripe fruits would be remarked, and felt even painfully by some. It is fashionable, and therefore considered a wise sanitary measure, to eat oranges as a prelude to the regular business of the morning meal. Grapes are eaten so long as they can be conveniently obtained. It may be because my own taste and digestion revolt at the practice of forcing crude acids upon an empty, and often faint stomach, that I am disposed to doubt the healthfulness of the innovation upon the long-established rule that sets fruit always in the place of dessert. I have an actual antipathy to the pungent odor of raw orange-peel, and have been driven from the breakfast-table at a hotel more than once by the overpowering effect of the piles of yellow rind at my left, right, and opposite to me. A cluster of grapes taken before breakfast would put me, and others whom I know, hors de combat for the day with severe headache. In the consciousness of this, I can be courageous in declining the “first course” of an à la mode breakfast, and at my own table, withholding the fruit until the stomach has regained its normal tone under the judicious application of substantial viands. Then, it is pleasant to linger over the vinous globes of crimson, purple, and pale-green; to dip ripe strawberries in powdered sugar with lazy gusto; to pare rosy rareripes and golden Bartletts while discussing the day’s news and plans, in the serene belief that the healthful, delicious juices are assimilating whatever incongruous elements have preceded them in the alimentary canal.
I write this, not to guide the practice of other households, but to enforce a remark I see an opportunity for bringing in here. Be a slavish follower of no custom whatsoever. It is sensible and expedient to act in uniformity with your neighbors when you can do so without moral or physical injury. Conformity to a foolish or hurtful fashion is always weak, if not positively wicked.
Serve your fruit, then, as the first or last course at your family breakfast as may seem right to yourself, but, by all means, have it whenever you can procure it comfortably and without much expense. In warm weather, you had better banish meat from the morning bill of fare, three days in the week, than have the children go without berries and other fresh fruits. Make a pretty glass dish, or silver or wicker basket of peaches, pears or plums, an institution of the summer breakfast. In autumn, you can have grapes until after frost; then, oranges and bananas if you desire. These, being expensive luxuries, are not absolutely enjoined by nature or common sense. Let the “basket of summer fruit,” however, be a comely and agreeable reality while solstitial suns beget bile, and miasma walks, a living, almost visible presence, through the land.
Fruits, each in its season, are the cheapest, most elegant and wholesome dessert you can offer your family or friends, at luncheon or tea. Pastry and plum-pudding should be prohibited by law, from the beginning of June until the end of September. And in winter, a dish of apples and oranges flanked by one of boiled chestnuts, and another of picked walnut or hickory-nut kernels, will often please John and the bairns better than the rich dessert that cost you a hot hour over the kitchen-range, when Bridget was called away to a cousin’s funeral, or Daphne was laid up with “a misery in her head.”
Among the creams, jellies and “forms” of a state-dinner dessert, fruit is indispensable, and the arrangement and preparation of the choicer varieties is a matter for the taste and skill of the mistress, or her refined daughters, as are the floral decorations of the feast.
Frosted Peaches.
12 large rich peaches—freestones.
Whites of three eggs, whisked to a standing froth.
2 table-spoonfuls water.