Where some interesting food names come from

Why it's called a Bing Cherry 

Cherries at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market.

I had never thought much about where the Bing Cherry got its name, though I've definitely eaten them with pleasure for much of my life. It's the kind of thing you don't think about until someone tells you, and then you wonder why you never wondered about it. 

In the current issue of the New Yorker, the author John McPhee, who has been writing for this magazine since 1963, published a brief memoir titled  “Tabula Rasa” in which he mentioned the history of this very popular variety of cherries:

"This cherry had been bred in 1875 at an orchard in Oregon, on the Willamette River, just south of Portland. In an open-pollination cross, its mother was a Black Republican and its father a Royal Ann (sic). The orchard foreman was Ah Bing. A Manchurian well over six feet tall, he spent several decades in the United States, sending home to his wife and children money from his long employment at what had been one of Oregon’s pioneer nurseries. Its founder, Henderson Lewelling, brought his fruit trees and his family overland by oxcart from Iowa.

"In a memoir written many years after the fact, a member of the Lewelling family recalled that Ah Bing had under his personal supervision the row of test trees in which the successful cultivar appeared. In any case, he was the foreman and the cherry was named for him. Taxonomy went elsewhere. The Bing cherry, of the species Prunus avium, has the medicinal implications of a prune. Ripening, it tends to split if too much rain falls on it. Hence this red cherry, by far the most popular in America, is mainly grown in the dry-summer valleys of Washington, Oregon, and California." (source) 

Why it's called a McIntosh Apple

After reading about the Bing Cherry, I wondered where popular varieties of apples get their names. New types of apples are constantly being developed, especially at three agricultural establishments: the University of Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station, Washington State University, and Cornell University. The Minnesota scientists developed the Honeycrisp apple in the 1980s, and named it for its main characteristics: sweetness and crispness. Honeycrisps are now among the most popular of apples (source). The Idared apple, similarly, was developed at the University of Idaho in the 1930s. I hate "delicious" apples, so I don't care how they got their undeserved name.

Many older varieties of apple got their names from the farmer in whose orchard the particular apple first appeared, or from someone the farmer knew. (Apples are grown by grafting the fruit-bearing twigs onto a different root stock, so all apples of a named variety are a single clone.)  Traditional varieties often date to the 19th century, for example, the McIntosh apple, which is still widely grown and very well-liked. From The Canadian Encyclopedia:

"The McIntosh apple (Malus domestica 'McIntosh') is often called the national apple of Canada. Discovered in 1811 by John McIntosh on his Ontario farm, the McIntosh apple has been commercially available since the 1880s. It is grown mostly in eastern Ontario, British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley, and the northeastern United States. The skin of this medium-sized apple is mostly bright red, but often includes green and white areas. The flesh is white, crisp and tart tasting. The McIntosh is one of the top 10 apples sold in North America." (source)

The origin of bergamot flavor and its name

Earl Grey tea is characterized by a flavor called “bergamot,” which comes from a citrus fruit called the bergamot. In Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World's Smells, author Harold McGee describes this fruit as "a cross between lemon and sour orange." McGee cites several uses for the flavor derived from the bergamot in perfume and in food flavorings.

There’s a commonly held belief that this exotic member of the citrus family was named for the town of Bergamo in Italy. (I was in Bergamo once, after a red-eye flight from the US to the Milan airport, which is not far from Bergamo, so I've always been a bit curious about the fruit and its name.)

McGee explains the real origin of the name Bergamot, which is even more exotic than the incorrect attribution to the little town of Bergamo:

"The fruit's unusual name apparently comes not from the Italian city Bergamo, but from the resemblance of its slightly elongated shape to that of another highly regarded fruit, the bergamot pear, whose name came from the Turkish beg-ármûdi "the prince's pear." It may have arisen somewhere in the Mediterranean and is now produced mainly in the southern Italian region of Calabria. The whole fruit is sometimes made into a fragrant marmalade." (p. 326)

I am finding McGee's book very interesting, though challenging to read. I have read about half of it, and will no doubt find a few more obscure things to mention in my blog as I continue. I may never feel confident enough to write a review of the entire book! 

 Blog post © 2022 mae sander.