The greatest edible icon of an American Summer is the watermelon. Because of its exalted status, everyone thinks they know all about the happy-go-lucky fruit. In many ways, however, it is a conundrum of gigantic proportion.

First of all, like the tomato is a fruit passing as a vegetable, the watermelon is a vegetable passing as a fruit. Watermelons are part of that family that includes pumpkins, squashes and cucumbers. In fact, while most of the fruit we enjoy are the ovaries of the plant on which they ripen, the watermelon is more precisely the placental tissue of the plant, speckled with seeds. This revelation, hopefully, will in no way diminish your enjoyment of the pretty, unassuming fruit - make that vegetable.

Where did this piece of Americana come from? Although it has been long enjoyed here, watermelon was a world-wide wonder long before it arrived in America. Archeological digs in India and Egypt show that the watermelon was cultivated as far back as 2500 BCE. It was already part of the Chinese way of life during the Sung Dynasty of the tenth century. Watermelon cultivation spread along Mediterranean trade routes to Greece and Italy and the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, says that it was “widely distributed throughout the Old World by the time the Americas were colonized.” Oxford credits the Spanish explorers with introducing the watermelon to the Caribbean, and growing them in Florida by 1576. French explorers were doing much the same in Canada and along the Mississippi. The Cambridge World History of Food asserts that Native Americans were growing watermelons “prior to the beginning of the seventeenth century.”

The first mention of the “fruit” in the English colonies was in 1629. Not long after, John Josselyn noted that watermelons grew well in Massachusetts in his, New England’s Rarities Discovered. In Amelia Simmon’s, American Cookery (1796), a recipe appeared for pickled Watermelon rind, authenticating its cultural embeddedness. In the mid nineteenth century, the explorer, David Livingstone, wrote of vast fields of wild and cultivated watermelons native to the Kalahari dessert. Many believe this to be the birthplace of the watermelon.

Along with sorghum, okra and other foods we consider commonplace today, the watermelon probably arrived in America with African slaves. Although African slave trade is said have begun in 1619 in America, the first slaves were brought to the West Indies in the early 16th century. My money is on these unfortunates, so often robbed of their significance in the development of American foodways, to have been the disseminators of the fun-to-eat watermelon.

It is a painfully irony that the universal enjoyment of the joyful fruit was turned against them. The innocent, too-big-to-be-taken-seriously watermelon became an instrument of racial ridicule. The vile art of stereotyping can be powerful and long lasting. In his stinging indictment of the caricaturing of black children, sociology professor David Pilgrim cites the ever-present grinning slice of watermelon as an accoutrement of racism. “Picaninnies had bulging eyes, unkempt hair, red lips, and wide mouths into which they stuffed huge slices of watermelon.” The lingering association still smarts.

Just the same, watermelon love was irrepressible. America’s first gourmet, Thomas Jefferson, grew them at Monticello, and upstart poet and transcendentalist philosopher, Henry David Thoreau, was proud of the juicy crop he grew in Concord Massachusetts. In Pudd’nhead Wilson, Mark Twain, son of the south, given at times to hyperbole, puts this on Pudd’nhead’s calendar: “The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned with commoner things. It is chief of this world’s luxuries, king by grace of God over all fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he knows what the angels eat." The great operatic tenor, Enrico Caruso, recognized the fruit’s efficiencies, “It’s a good fruit … you eat, you wash your face.” And in the halcyon days of the late 1960’s, Richard Brautigan wrote a lyrical depiction of a utopian heaven called, In Watermelon Sugar. None of this affection for the tuba of the fruit world is misplaced or exaggerated.

Watermelon has found its way into American folk art, literature, music, marketing and advertising. There were (and are) festivals with parades and Watermelon Queens, seed spitting, recipe, and growing contests. In August, Hope, Arkansas (Bill Clinton’s birthplace) will hold its annual Watermelon Festival. It was there in 2006, a 268.8 pound behemoth entered the Guinness Book of World Records.

Watermelon love reaches far beyond North America. You can request it in over 25 languages including; Swedish, vattenmelon, cocomero in Italian, sandia in Spanish, suika in Japanese and tarbuza in Hindi — should you find yourself traveling and have the desire. The traditional pickled watermelon rind of the American south derives from Greece and the Middle East where it is eaten as a “spoon” treat served with tea. The roasted, salted seeds popular here have long been enjoyed in Lebanon, Syria and Egypt. On the streets of Madras (now Chennai), you can buy watermelon juice cooled with watermelon juice ice cubes sprinkled with salt and pepper. In Italy, a cool watermelon pudding (see below) is simply made, incorporating cinnamon, pistachios, and chocolate bits to represent the seeds.

So round, so firm, so fully packed. Once upon a time, the citrullus lanatus, came in two sizes — big and bigger, weighing in at over twenty five pounds and up to fifty. You bought them whole or not at all. These were the Jubilee or picnic watermelons — big, ovoid, with mahogany brown seeds perfectly designed to be projectiles. You’d thump one to tell if it was ripe, and you took your chances. One melon might be cut for show, but slices didn’t exist. Eventually there arrived smaller, rounder Crimson Sweets in the 16-25 pound range, still pretty big by today’s standards. And the 5-15 pound, dark green, round, “Sugar Baby,” is still popular with those who want to take it home and chill it whole in the fridge.

The first “seedless” watermelon debuted in 1948. It has small, white, edible, under developed seed coats and costs more — but seedless it isn’t. Somehow the idea of a watermelon without seeds diminishes the memory provoking powers of the fruit.

Speaking of power; although mostly water (92%) watermelon still supplies lots of vitamins (A, B 6, C), beta-carotene and more lycopene than fresh tomatoes. A ten-ounce slice has only 86 calories, so have two. With its cool, granita-like texture, inviting color, smiley presence and sugary effervescence, the now fully explained watermelon is the perfect summer tablemate. Dig in.

RECIPES
Watermelon, the icon of summer, is the definition of an unalloyed simple pleasure, a warm weather taste that is always satisfying. It can, however, be taken beyond its basic slurpy slices with joyful results as these recipes will prove.