“If you want to live long, to retain your youth at the same time, and to increase your brain-tissue, eat plenty of apples, drink only distilled water, and eat as little bread as possible. A diluted solution of phosphoric acid is also recommended to those who care to take pains to follow the diet here outlined.”
Tart apples are far more wholesome than sweet, and all, like potatoes, should be fully ripe when eaten.
Wash and polish them for the table, arrange in a silver basket or glass dish, and pass silver knives with them. The touch of steel injures the flavor.
Peaches
Neither wash nor wipe. The soft down upon the cheek of a ripe peach is one of its charms. Keep on the ice until you are ready to serve, then pile in a fruit dish and garnish with peach leaves. Pass silver knives with them.
To prepare grapefruit for table
Cut the grapefruit in half, and dig out the hard core and seeds, leaving a hollow in the center. Loosen the pulp from the skin all around the sides of the fruit, so that it can be eaten easily with a spoon. The method from this point is determined by the individual taste. Some persons like the fruit without sugar. Others fill the hollow in the middle with sugar, and pour upon this a little rum, or sherry, or Maraschino. The addition of a few Maraschino cherries is often made, and in hot weather the fruit is sometimes laid in the ice.
Picked pineapple
Peel the pineapple and remove the little dark protuberances upon the surface of the fruit. With a fork pick or tear the fruit into strips, strew these with granulated sugar and set in the ice until wanted.