Stuffed toronja   

Francisco Martinez Montino, 1611, The Art of Cooking, Pie Making, Pastry Making, and Preserving

Stuffed toronja

These stuffed toronjas can be made with meat, sweeting them as if preserving them. Then make the filling with veal or mutton, mincing it with fatback. Brown it is a saucepan with a drop of broth, remove it, mince again and season with spices and salt. Mix into the meat small bits of marrow and as many eggs as you think necessary. The meat should be like the meat for teat pies or bowl-shaped pies. Add in sugar as sweetener and lemon juice and stuff the toronjas. Grate sugar on top and place them in the oven over some slices of bread with the flame above and below and let them set nicely. Grate sugar on top.

Note that this toronja filling can be made like the stuffing for chickens making it sweet and sour, and you can also add dried currants pine nuts and beef marrow.

You can also make it with hard boiled egg yolks mixed with the same amount of marzipan paste and beef marrow all mashed together. Then add in some raw egg yolk, season with spices, cinnamon and lemon juice. The toronja must be preserved. You can sweeten, preserve and fill them all in a half day even if they were just picked from the tree. You should make a lye solution, dilute it, and boil them in it. Then boil them in fresh water three or four times. This is how they will turn out tender and sweet. Have some simple syrup and cook them in it. They you are ready to fill them with whatever you like.

First, what are toronja? I consulted the Givaudan Citrus Variety Collection at the University of California Riverside. They responded as follows:

You are correct that the Spanish word “toronja” would not have referred to grapefruit before the 18th century, since grapefruit arose in the 17th century as a hybrid of pummelo (Citrus maxima, the maternal parent) and sweet orange.

There’s a ton of information about the long complex history of citrus and its nomenclature. “Toronja” is derived from the Arabic word(s) toronj/turunj/utrunj/utrujj, cognate with the Hebrew etrog, for citron. In Persian toronj means a small citron, while a large citron is called balang.

The best quick answer to your question is in the attached article:

Ramon-Laca, L., 2003. The introduction of cultivated citrus to Europe via Northern Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. Economic Botany, 57(4), pp.502-514.

Ramon-Laca writes:

 The first record [of citron] in a Romanic tongue appears to be toronja, mentioned by the Catalan troubadour Cerverí de Girona about 1270 (Coromines 1988:315). The forms taronja and aranja used in Catalonia actually refer to the sour orange. ...

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, when Arabic was still spoken by the moriscos in many places throughout Spain … toronja meant both the citron and pummelo.

So in sixteenth century Spanish “toronja” might have referred to what today would be called citron, pummelo, or sour orange – or possibly other similar forms of citrus. We have lots of those in the Givaudan Citrus Variety Collection, and you can see our photos on the GCVC website. For gorgeous illustrations of these fruits from 1708-1714, see the recently reproduced color version of Volkamer’s great citrus treatise, Hesperides:

https://www.amazon.com/Volkhamer-Citrus-Fruits-J/dp/3836535254 

Start by preserving/candying the toronja peel.

Halve fruit and remove pulp. Soak in several changes of water over several days. Boil in sugar syrup. Now the sweet peel cups are ready for stuffing.

Stuffing #1

Mince veal or mutton with bacon.

Brown in a pan adding a small amount of broth.

Remove from the pan and cool slightly. Then chop more.

Season with spice mixture and salt.

Mix in marrow and eggs.

Mix in lemon juice and sugar.

Fill the peels.

Grate sugar on top.

Place in baking dish on top of sliced bread

Bake

Dice 1 slice of bacon and knead into ½ lb ground lamb

Brown this mixture … it makes it’s own broth at this small scale

Turn out onto the cutting board without the liquid

Let cool and then chop fine

½ tsp spice mix, ¼ tsp salt, 2 Tb butter diced, 1 egg, 1 tsp lemon juice, ½ tsp sugar

Knead all together and stuff into the citrus peel. This filling will do for two pummelo halves.

Sprinkle sugar on top

Stuffing #2

Look up chicken stuffing … add dried currants pine nuts and beef marrow.

Stuffing for chicken page 159

Fry fatback. Add onion chopped lengthwise and fry more. When the onion is partially cooked add raw minced meat and fry until meat is browned.

Add spearmint, cilantro and marjoram.

Add eggs (six for four chickens) and cook through.

Turn out onto a cutting board and chop finely.

Add four raw eggs and season with black pepper, saffron, lemon or orange juice, and salt.

This is the most common stuffing. If you don’t have meat you can use hens livers.

Dice one strip of bacon and fry

Slice one quarter of an onion lengthwise and add to the onion. Cook

Add ½ lb ground lamb and brown

Add 1 Tb chopped fresh cilantro, 1 tsp dried mint, 1 tsp dried marjoram, two eggs. Cook

Turn out onto the cutting board to cool and then chop fine

Add one egg, ½ tsp pepper, ¼ tsp salt, 1 Tb bitter orange juice, 2 Tb butter, 1 Tb pine nuts and 1 Tb currants. Knead together.

Stuff into citrus peel. This filling will do for two pummelo halves

Stuffing #3

Hard boiled egg yolks mixed with equal amount of marzipan and beef marrow all mashed together. Add egg yolks.

Season with spices, cinnamon and lemon juice

Three hard boiled egg yolks mixed with ¼ cup marzipan and ¼ cup butter run through food processor.

Add three egg yolks, 1 Tb lemon juice, ½ tsp spice mix and ½ tsp cinnamon.

Pour into citrus peel. This filling will do for two pummelo halves.

Bake at 325 for one hour.

Three pummelos

Halve and remove fruit.

Soak peels with pith. Pith is very thick. Peel is very thin.

Change water twice a day. Sunday to Wednesday.

Scrape the insides again, still leaving some pith.

Add sugar … fill each cup of peel and add some more to the pot. Fill to cover with water.

Boil once a day, Wednesday to Sunday.