Confederacy of a Dunce

Friday, February 10, 2006

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One of the great things about living in London is all the unusual international food that's available here. Quite often we see something unusual and can't resist having a try. This week was fruit week, as Mrs. Dunce came across a "honey pomelo" at our local Turkish shop. Neither of us had heard of a pomelo before, so we had no idea what to expect. It was fairly round and of a light orange color. And it was very large, about the size of my head (and not just any hat will fit me). We figured it must be some sort of melon, and chopped it open to reveal... well it was not a melon at all. Instead it's definitely a citrus fruit, perhaps intended for a giant (gigantic segments, with very thick, heavy pith [or whatever you call the icky inedible stuff between segments of citrus fruits). It smelled a lot like a grapefruit, and tasted like one too (slightly less tart, but gradually increasing as we ate more of it, even with a sprinkling of brown sugar). For more information we turned to my favorite food-related book by far, McGee on Food and Cooking¹. McGee didn't list "pomelo" but we came across "pummelo" in the Citrus section. Pomelo/pummelo, botanically known as citrus maxima originally comes from southeast Asia. It's in fact the ancestor of the grapefruit (which developed in Barbados in the 18th century, apparently the product of spontaneous miscegenation between pomelo and orange.). We're still not sure what it was doing in our local Turkish shop.

¹You can get a good idea about why I like McGee on Food so much from Amazon's "Statistically Improbable Phrases" (SIPs) that are listed for it. Among them are "savory amino acids", "collagen into gelatin", "buttery diacetyl", "browning enzymes", "noncrystalline candies", "chlorinated flour", "aroma molecules", "gelatin molecules", "continuous meshwork", "antioxidant phenolic compounds", "wood decomposers". Yes, it's a highly scientific treatment of food, but with plenty of historical and practical information provided as well.

consume

Friday, February 10, 2006 1:36:25 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)