JANE GRIGSON'S FRUIT BOOK

Another transatlantic work of robust and practical charm--like Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book (1979), organized into some 45 sections each devoted to an individual fruit or cluster of near cousins (e.g., oranges, tangerines, and kumquats). Matters are amiably parceled out among practical information; recipes (from sources as diverse as Elizabeth David, the Scottish Tourist Board, and a ""Sine-Vietnamese"" cookbook bought ""near the station in Tours""); and odd bits of lore (a snatch of Browning on an Italian melonpeddler, Herrick on the cherries growing ""where Julia's lips do smile""). The recipes naturally run strongly to desserts; Grigson does not go in for today's outrÉ fruit-and-meat combinations. But she does draw interestingly on the use of fruit for savory dishes in, for example, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisine (Italian orange and olive salad; lamb ""polo""--i.e., pilaf--with raisins and dried apricots; Persian faisinjan of duck stewed with pomegranate juice); and she comes up with some pleasantly offbeat improvisations--like ossi buchi with gooseberries. The dessert recipes should charm almost anyone but fanciers of gooey extravaganzas: apple dumplings, pear and black currant tart, citrus sorbets, paskha with glazed pineapple, prunes stuffed with walnuts. As in Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book, the recipes are printed with triple-system measurements (metric, UK, US), and there is a moderately useful but far from deft glossary of English culinary terms (this one by Judith Hill). The book itself, however, transcends oddities of communication.