FoodNet

Most for your money cookbook

1938

Page 109 · 1 recipe record on this page

Presented as published in 1938. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
21. Fancy forking — all eating of whole oranges impaled on forks is but a refinement of the skewer method, to avoid using both hands. But there are even fancy refinements of orange fork- ing, adopted by ladies who don't like to smear the lip-stick all over the ears. One is to leave the skin on and cut in six or eight slices, not around the middle of the orange, but from stem to stern. Then each slice is impaled with a fork through the skin; seeds and excess membranes are cut away, and the new-moon segments chewed most elegantly, while held horizontal with the fork. In preparing oranges whole, it's well to recall the Assyrian prov- 192 MOST-FOR-YOUR-MONEY COOK BOOK erb — An orange is like a cat on a chimney pot. It may look round to you, but it isn't. And another good saw to remember is — The more juice in the eye, the less in the mouth. People in prunes-and-prisms days used to say with shocked modesty that oranges shouldn't be sucked in public and that really the only suitable place to consume one was in the privacy of the bath tub. They're wrong; that's the proper place to mangle a mango. Here's a juicy quotation of those orange horrors, from Cranjord: When oranges came in, a curious proceeding was gone through. Miss Jenkyns did not like to cut the fruit for, as she observed, the juice all ran out nobody knows where; sucking (only I think she used some more recondite word) was, in fact, the only way of enjoying oranges, but then there was the unpleasant association with a cere- mony frequently gone through by little babies and so, after dessert in orange season. Miss Jenkyns and Miss Matty used to rise up, possess themselves of an orange in silence and withdraw to the privacy of their own rooms to indulge in sucking oranges. Some people like to chew the fresh peel or just sit for a while and smell it, and we see no harm in that, unless it's one of those "Color Added" abominations. The only fit use we can think of for those fakes, that even come tied up in red bags so they'll look healthy- cheeked until you get them in your hand, is to turn them inside out as containers for blue-flamed Cafe Diable^ or to make one of those silly little scalloped baskets with or without a bow-ribboned handle, to hold the inedible pats of fruit salad with which cus- tomers are molested at penthouse pink teas. Half of the promise of an orange lurks in that natural golden glow which gave it the name ''Golden Apple" in ancient days. Oranges too were then considered to be the mythical ambrosia that the gods snacked upon; and some sentimental prohibition- ist or fruitarian once jingled: "Here's to the orange. The fruit divine, Whose golden juice Is better than wine." But the chorus to this is obviously **0h yeah?" XXVI Sweets ST) 1/^ kr^t y-. \\\v ^ •#. z> <^5?. ^"^^Wm- PULLED TAFFY Pulled Taffy