Meeting new fruits

Joanna here. I was eating a kiwi fruit the other day. It showed up coyly snuggled next to a breakfast sandwich sold to me by the delightful ladies who run the catering and breakfast bar at the Rockfish Gap Community Center. I found myself trying to remember when I’d first seen kiwi. I was young and they showed up in the grocery store one day and my mother, who was a wild woman in her own way, brought them home and figured out how to serve them. They were just mind-bogglingly exotic to me. Furry fruits. I rather distrusted them.

There are many different kinds of kiwi fruits, not just the ones in US supermarkets

Kiwis apparently came from China and were originally called “Chinese gooseberries” as they spread around the world. The Chinese called them "macaque peaches" but that didn't catch on so much. The fruit was popularized in the US by WWII servicemen who’d met them while stationed in New Zealand. And they seem to come to the store from California, not New Zealand. Life is a rich pageant of happenstance, isn't it?

“Hmmm,” I hmmed to myself while I was feeding much of my breakfast sandwich to the dog Mandy but eating all the kiwis, “What did my Georgian and Regency heroine encounter as new and exciting fruit as she went about her adventures?” Kiwis and avocados hadn’t arrived in her world. Apples and apricots and even dates were known from Roman times and before.

I thought of two possibles.

Bananas. (Did you know bananas are technically a berry. That’s the kind of little fact that’s likely to get you excluded from the company of all right-minded people if you go around pointing it out.)

Bananas spread from southeast Asia to the Middle East and Africa, making everybody happy as they went. The first written trace of their arrival in England was a recorded sale in 1633.

But archeologists found an ancient banana in a Tudor rubbish tip so a few of them were sneaking in even before the Tudors.

A Regency miss might have found one an expensive imported delicacy even in 1798 or 1811. Bananas didn’t get common till after refrigerated transport. Maybe her hero knew somebody who knew somebody in the shipping business.

“You can't teach calculus to a chimpanzee. So just share your banana.” John Rachel

Pineapples. These would be both familiar and unfamiliar to our Regency heroine.

Isn't that a pretty pineapple. There are all kinds of pineapples too.

The plant comes from South America and was spread by Spanish colonialists across the tropical regions of Asia and Africa. The Dutch took it from Surinam to Europe in the Seventeenth Century. Pineapples were ready to catch on, but it wasn’t at all easy to bring them halfway round the world.

So the Europeans grew their own in the cold gray, being stubborn. The first European pineapple was successfully reared at Meersburg in 1658. In 1723, a huge "pineapple stove" was built to warm the hot house at the Chelsea Physic Garden. Louis XV was presented with a pineapple grown at Versailles in 1733. Catherine the Great grew them. These were not your everyday cabbages. They were status fruits.

“When life gives you lemons, sell them and buy a pineapple. How to Better Your Life 101.” Davin Turney

Yes, it really is the Dunsmore Pineapple

So expensive and snazzy were pineapples in these early years of the Eighteenth Century that they were at first used for display at dinner parties rather than eaten. Like flowers. Rumor has it the town fruitmongers would snap pineapples up as they came into dock and rent them out for parties . . . till they became questionable even as decoration.

But the real fun for the great of the land was in growing them competitively. Hothouses became more and more elaborate as aristocratic gardening rivalry grew. The Earl of Dunsmore built a great hothouse on his estate topped by a stone cupola 14 metres high. They called it the Dunmore Pineapple. (Earls just wanna have fun.)

By the end of the Eighteenth Century, the pineapple had become a staple of the well-to-do country garden hothouse. The carved pineapples on the Squire's gates promised lavish hospitality at the manor.

August: shift the succession of pineapples into larger pots, in which they are to bear; give but little water to ripening pines, lest the flavour be weakened.
      American Edition of the British Encyclopedia, 1819

Pineapples on the towers of St Paul's Cathedral, London

Unless my Regency heroine is a card-carrying member of the haut ton, she might have grown to adulthood having seen the carved stone fruit but never having tasted pineapple. When she’s served a slice, perhaps cooled on ice, she’d know she was being coddled.

Pineapples, you will be pleased to know, are technically a collection of berries. Yes. Pineapples too. Berries are awesome

“Be a pineapple: Stand tall, wear a crown, and be sweet on the inside.” Katherine Gaskin

 

What about you? What new and exotic foods have come into your life? What have you tried and loved?

For me, recently, it’s delicata squash.

Comments

[Muse of Ire]

I once read a Regency where a heroine in the Kentish countryside was served apple-cranberry crisp and wondered if she had a New England connection running those little bog jewels directly to her . . .

[Mary M.]

Joanna, you triggered a memory for me of an early Regency that I successfully unearthed on Amazon: At the Sign of the Golden Pineapple (The Love and Temptation Series Book 2) by Marion Chesney/M.C. Beaton. The pineapple was, as you pointed out, a sign of congenial hospitality, and the heroine used it as a literal sign on her confectioner's shop.

I can offer two really exotic fruits, one I've tasted and the other I only photographed. The first was a rose apple, which I was offered at a Sister Cities meeting at a school in Hainan, China. We (from Scottsdale, AZ) were sitting on one side of a long table across from our Chinese counterparts, with a row of fruit baskets down the center. I'd been eyeing a lovely red fruit that was new to me and finally reached out for it. Our hosts quickly encouraged me, and soon our whole delegation dug into the baskets. The rose apple was kind of pear shaped, with a texture between an apple and a plum—crisp and juicy. I loved it, but have not been able to find them in my area. My guess is, they don't travel well, too delicate. Too bad, I'd love one right now!

The other was an odd fruit growing on a shrub right here in the Phoenix area. Picture a bunch of fingers covered in lemon peel. Somehow I successfully found it on Google: Buddha's hand. Not surprisingly, it is a citrus. Not for eating, but can be used for jam. It was in someone else's yard, so I only photographed it. Look it up, it's very interesting.

But, come to think of it, I guess my favorite exotic-but-not-scarce fruit is the "scaly" red dragon fruit, with its refreshingly juicy white flesh dotted with tiny, crunchy black seeds. I had a huge one in Thailand that cost me less than $1. Unfortunately, one that big would run $6 stateside, but I occasionally treat myself to a smaller, reasonably priced one from the Asian market.

Guess you can tell I'm a foodie and a fruit junky, lol.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Bananas are berries? And found in Tudor rubbish tips? What a marvelous world we live in!

[Sue McCormick]

Although the fruit has been around since Ancient Times, the pomegranate is somewhat exotic here in the midwest. You don't often see it at the markets, nor do you find the seeds sprinkled over a salad to add tartness.

Imagine my surprise 60 or so years ago, to find children eating pomegranate seeds in an inner city school yard.

I asked if they knew the "pomegranate story" and when told no, promised it as an end of the day treat. So those inner city children were entertained by the story of Persephone.

[Janga]

I had kiwi for breakfast this morning as a change from strawberries and never knew I was still eating a berry. :) Joanna, did you know that a rented pineapple figures prominently in Eloisa James's My American Duchess?

We have a pomegranate bush in our yard, but I'm not a fan of the fruit, despite its current reputation as a superfood. Muscadines are certainly not exotic in the South. Indeed, the jelly and wine are staples of regional culture, but some of my friends who are not natives of the region view them with all the trepidation with which many people approach exotic fruits.

[Anne Gracie]

Lovely post, Joanna. Living in Australia, we get a lot of exotic fruits from SE Asia -- too many to list, but a fruit that might be new to a lot of people is the finger lime.
it's a citrus with a longish fruit, and when you break it open, it's like citrus-flavored caviar — hundreds of little bubbles of citrussy goodness. They vary from pale yellowy-green to a gorgeous berry-red color, depending on the variety.

A native Australian plant that grows wild in the warmer areas of this country, it has only become commercially cultivated in the last 20 years or so. You can see some pictures here:
http://www.sgaonline.org.au/finger-limes/
https://www.daleysfruit.com.au/bushfood/fingerlime.htm

[Barbara Monajem (@BarbaraMonajem)]

Lychees. Yum.

[Kareni]

What a fascinating article! Thank you, Joanna. When I lived in Guam some forty years ago (egads), it was common to eat green mango dipped into seasoned salt. t was akin to eating an apple. And when I lived in Jamaica, I enjoyed drinking soursop juice.

[Joanne Bourne]

It's not impossible, I suppose. Quick research says cranberries were shipped to Europe in the 1820s. So maybe some of them they made it to England.

They talk a bit about them here.
http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/holiday06/cran.cfm

Interesting stuff.

[Joanne Bourne]

Now I'm all anxious to try a red dragon fruit. I'll keep an eye out for it.

The rose apple sounds most intriguing.

[Joanne Bourne]

I was flabberghasted to find out about the Tudor rubbish tip.

How very much we don't know about history.

[Joanne Bourne]

I remember eating pomegranates as a child. They struck me an an overly elaborate sort of fruit and a great deal of work to get not so very much result.

I've started seeing them in the supermarket again lately. Are they making a comeback?

[Joanne Bourne]

In American Duchess? Cool.

Muscadines have always struck me as quite beautiful to look upon, subtly colored and splendidly spherical. I'd like to put stuff like that in a fruit bowl and set it on the counter, but end up keeping them in the refridge.

[Joanne Bourne]

I've only ever had canned lychees. I was not over-impressed. I will remind myself to seek out some fresh ones. I hear such fine things of them.

[Joanne Bourne]

I've never had green mango, though I suppose it would be perfectly easy to do so. We have mango in most markets.

So many choices these days.

[Jay Hicks]

Lovely post. Thank you. Back in grade three at school, about 1969, my father was the fruit and vegetables buyer for Safeway statewide and we were the first to have everything that was new to the market. One day he came home with a whole case of avocados - we had them on sandwiches with dad’s favourite combo of lemon juice and soy sauce. We all I got teased for having snot sandwiches at school. Toffee apples - cases of them - made good favour with the kids in the neighbourhood so that shut them up. What I would do for whole cases of fruit and veges now...

[Karin]

Asian pears are wonderful. They've got the roughish tan colored of a Bosc pear, but are shaped like a large apple, and they taste like a cross between apple and pear.
Pomegranates are indeed making a big comeback, but they are a lot of work to eat.

[jeanette dilts]

The world gets smaller these days and the produce section of a grocery store is one sure place to notice that. I still remember my first experience of star fruit. We have a produce/wine/cheese/you-name-it shop called Horrock's in Lansing, a mere 40 miles away, where I see the most unusual fruit in the area - recently a huge fruit like an elongated basket ball or fat American football called Jack fruit as I recall. A fruit I enjoy is the American persimmon which are awful until frost hits - think alum - and they need to ripen on the tree which makes them hard to transport but are delicious frozen then thawed slightly. Pawpaw is another native American fruit and a cultivated taste to my mind. Supposed to be a custard-like mango/banana/citrus cross but any I've had missed the mark. A treasured compliment from my late mother-in-law was that I always have a fresh fruit bowl on our table. Fresh fruit including some unusual ones is also a gift I like to give to one of my older neighbors at Christmas time because she loves it and she's one of those people who need nothing.

[Joanne Bourne]

In America we think of ourselves as welcoming and being enriched by all cultures.

All fruits and veggies, too, I think.

When I'm feeling adventurous I pick out something slightly scary in the supermarket and take it home.

I get some wins and some looses (and some are doubtless rained out.)

Next up on my list will be those yellow star-fruits. Sometime soon.