EDIBLE boston Summer 2008 15

Watermelonby Elizabeth Gawthrop Riely

On a sizzling summer day, slaking one’s thirst with a sliceof juicy red watermelon is a great and simple pleasure:crisp, sweet and above all, wet. It’s also part of the Amer-ican childhood experience, one of those indelible mem-ories. At Fourth of July picnics I remember theseed-spitting contest kept us well occupied while weimagined ourselves planting future fields of watermelons. As familiar and American as it may seem, the water-

melon has an ancient, exotic and more recently, dark his-tory. For a millennium, no one knew its place of origin,although the watermelon was vaguely believed to havecome to these shores from Africa via the slave trade. Thename for a plant can often point the way to its startingpoint, its root, but the words for watermelon in manylanguages do not relate to each other. In French(pastèque), Italian (cocomero), Spanish (sandia), and Por-tuguese (melancia). There is no etymological tie betweenthese Romance words. Going further afield and back, thewords for watermelon in ancient languages—Greek (kar-pouxzi), Hebrew (avatiah), Arabic (batfikh), Persian (hin-duwana), and Tamil (palam)—have no cognates. This allshows the watermelon’s prehistoric dissemination. In the ancient world, watermelon was an important

fruit in hot climates. Hieroglyphs in Egypt 5,000 yearsago record the harvest and depictions of watermelons ap-pear on the walls of pharaohs’ tombs to refresh them intheir afterlife. In Egyptian mythology, watermelons camefrom the semen of the god Set who personified the desert.In the Book of Exodus, the thirsty Israelites, wandering inthe desert after their flight from Egypt, longed for the wa-termelons they had left behind. The watermelon made its way throughout the Mediter-

ranean and Middle East to Asia a millennium ago withthe help, as usual, of Arabs along their trade routes eastand west. The fruit is still traditionally prepared in manycultures today. In Sicily, the rind is candied and the fleshtransformed into rich puddings with ground nuts, spicesand even chocolate. In Greece, the nutritious seeds areroasted and salted for a popular snack sold by street ven-dors. In the Caucasus, the unripe fruit is stuffed and

cooked like a vegetable. In southern Russian, the juice isreduced to a thick syrup or fermented into beer. North America was introduced to watermelons by

Spanish explorers who brought them to the Caribbean,Florida and later the Southwest. French trappers intro-duced them to Canada and the Mississippi Valley, and bythe 16th century Native Americans were cultivating water-melons. Among the British colonies in New England,watermelons were grown in Massachusetts as early as1629. Amelia Simmons included growing instructionsand a recipe for pickled rind in her American Cookery,published in Hartford in 1796, regarded as the first trulyAmerican cookbook. Despite the watermelon’s conquest of the warmer parts

of the globe, its origin long remained unknown, the con-fusion of its names adding to the mystery. In 1849, thegreat British explorer David Livingstone solved this puz-zle when he discovered vast tracts of watermelon growingwild in the Kalahari Desert of central Africa (Botswana).This fruit was tsamma, the progenitor of watermelon,sometimes called citron melon, which grows with sweetor bitter white flesh, the difference not discernible fromthe uncut rind. Vines can have as many as 100 melonsgrowing on them, and the fruit, eaten by man and beast,remains fresh for as long as two years. The watermelon’sgreat importance came from providing an oasis in hot cli-mates where reliable, unpolluted water is scarce. Certainly watermelon, distantly related to other mel-

ons, is one of Africa’s great contributions to the food in-gredients of the world, but just when and where it wasfirst cultivated is still unknown. The savannahs of WestAfrica seem likely, and from there slaves undoubtedlybrought its seeds to America. In the United States, sincethe 19th century the story of watermelon has been com-plicated by racial stereotypes, a topic for another article.Whatever its history may be, on a hot summer day a

ripe watermelon is something to enjoy in the present. Byany name, it’s high in vitamin C, so low in calories thatyou needn’t count them and full of H²O—a self-con-tained oasis. �

Edible TraditionsPhotograph: Carole Topalian

16 Summer 2008 edible boston

WATERMELON AND MINT RAITA

Thanks to David Eckel for suggesting an Indian raitawith watermelon instead of cucumber as a cooling accom-paniment to spicy dishes. This easy dish is a subtle contrastof flavors.

Makes about 6 servings.

2 cups plain yogurt 1 Tablespoon lemon juicePinch of salt1 Tablespoon vegetable oil2 teaspoons whole brown or black mustard seeds2 teaspoons whole cumin seed3 Tablespoons chopped fresh mint leaves, more for garnish2 cups seedless diced watermelon

1. Put the yogurt in a bowl with the lemon juice and salt. 2. In a small saucepan, heat the oil over medium flame.When it is hot, add the mustard seed, then the cuminand stir for a minute or two while the mustard sizzles andpops. 3. Pour the seeds over the yogurt. Stir in the choppedmint leaves with the watermelon. 4. Serve the raita with a few torn mint leaves on top asgarnish.

WATERMELON GRANITA

The texture of granita is intentionally grainy, the flavornot too sweet, so it is perfect as a hot-weather quencher. Ifyou are serving this to children, call it slush. For adults,you could stir in a small amount of gin or rum at the end.

Makes approximately 1 quart.

4 cups seedless watermelon purée½ cup sugar, or to tasteJuice of 1 lemon

1. Remove the seeds from the watermelon and purée in ablender. Put the purée through a coarse sieve into a bowland stir in the sugar; hold some back to avoid over-sweet-ening. 2. Add the lemon juice and stir until the sugar dissolves. 3. Cover and chill well, overnight if possible.

4. Put the chilled watermelon mixture into a wide shallowpan, cover and carefully set it in the freezer. From time totime, as it begins to freeze, stir it, breaking up the ice crys-tals but without smoothing them as for sorbet. In a homefreezer this takes about 3 hours after thorough chilling.Spoon the granita into bowls for serving. A green leaffrom your herb garden makes a pretty garnish.

GREEK WATERMELON AND FETA SALAD

This refreshing summer salad, which hardly needs arecipe, turns on the contrast between the sweet, crispmelon and the tangy, creamy feta. For more assertive fla-vor, use arugula instead of mint; black pitted olives andred onion rings make it more robust still.

Makes 2 servings.

6 large tender pale leaves of Boston lettuce2 cups seedless watermelon balls or cubes2 Tablespoons olive oil, or to taste1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juiceA generous grinding of black peppercorns5 or 6 large mint leaves, cut across into chiffonade 2 Tablespoons crumbled feta

1. Line two plates (soup tureens are ideal) with 3 lettuceleaves each. 2. Cut the melon and put it in a bowl. 3. In another bowl, mix together the olive oil and lemonjuice, tasting for balance. 4. Add a good twist of black pepper. Stir the dressing well. 5. Drain the melon balls and toss them in the dressing,then add the mint and gently toss again. 6. Divide the melon between the two plates and crumblethe feta on top and serve immediately.

Elizabeth Gawthrop Riely edits The Culinary Times, newsletter ofthe Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe. Her dictionary, The Chef ’s Com-panion (John Wiley & Sons), is in its third edition, marking changesin the edible landscape. You may find her at the Brookline or NewtonFarmers Market.