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.

John McPhee, “The Control of Nature”

The port of Haimaey, Iceland, as we saw it in August, 2021. One of the two mountains dates to 1973.
The town exists today because of an incredible effort to stop the lava from this emerging volcano.

In 1973, in the small port town of Haimaey in the Westman Islands of Iceland, a volcano erupted, suddenly creating a mountain just outside the town, where a peaceful dairy farm had stood. In 1988, John McPhee published an account, "Cooling the Lava," describing the unique effort of Haimaey’s population to save the harbor and the town. 

The 5000 residents were aided by the government and volunteers from the entire nation of Iceland, and by the American military. Miraculously, and by incredible effort, ingenuity, and luck, they saved at least part of the town and above all, saved the harbor from becoming land-locked. 

McPhee, a very highly respected writer, spent some months in the1980s interviewing many of the people who had been involved in the effort. His article. subsequently published in his book The Control of Nature (1989), is fascinating, readable, and not in any way obsolete. It’s in fact a pleasure to read, as are many of his other works.

When the eruption started, people had to flee homes that were being overpowered by the flow of lava from the emerging volcanic peak. Evacuation by sea and by air saved many families and even some chickens and sheep from the dangers of volcanic heat, ash, and toxic fumes. Many people who left never returned to see their destroyed homes. But the town is now fully occupied, and the port is very busy, despite many changes since McPhee wrote.

"Not merely was Heimaey's harbor the best harbor along the three hundred miles of Iceland's south coast, it was the only one." (p. 98)

Although small, Heimaey was a vital port for the Icelandic fishing industry, which at the time was a major part of Icelandic exports. When it appeared that lava would close the mouth of the harbor, desperate measures were chosen -- namely, to spray cooling water on the advancing lava. McPhee documents how at first this seemed futile. Who dares to think of stopping a volcano? But the port was saved. It's unprovable whether cooling the lava really stopped the lava, but it seems that it did.

Sheep and puffins on a hillside in the Westman Islands. "The puffin is among the nations' emblematic birds. With its bright-white chest, its orange webbed feet, and its bir orange scimitar bill, it could be an iced toucan." (p. 75)

   

"On the sixth day, the wind veered southwest, and the ashfall returned to the ocean. The town seemed covered by deep black snow. Many houses were discernible only as dunes in the tephra. If they burned, they left kettle-shaped pits. ... When real snow fell, it made a black-and-white, silvery, surrealist world." (p. 111)
Image from my trip in 2021, showing the tranquil and colorful little town below the volcano.

This church was built in 2000 on lava that flowed into the old harbor during the 1973 eruption.  It was a gift from Norway, and is a replica of a Norwegian medieval church from the Viking era.
I took this photo from the bus we took to see the island. You can learn more here.

The Viking church seen from the ship.
Both the level ground and the wall behind it were created by the volcano.

Lava came very close to this house, though there's surely been a lot of rebuilding in nearly 50 years.
You can see a sort of trench that was a result of the lava's advance.

Our ship in the harbor of Haimaey.

A town that has recovered from an existential threat worse than war. 

What was it like?

"The ash was typically about as large as bits of pea gravel. They fell by the millions -- hot enough and sharp enough to burn and cut skin. The bombs were ejections of molten lava that flew high into the air, became spherical, and with contained gases, sometimes exploded like fireworks. In their interiors, bombs were generally molten. After they landed and broke, red-hot liquid poured out." (p. 102-103) 

"The ash in the streets was dense enough to drive on, even where it was fifteen and twenty feet deep.... The gas [carbon monoxide] came over the lip of the crater, flowed downhill, and went through the town like a river. When humidity was high, the river was visible, with its eddies of blue haze. It suffocated cats. It stalled cars. People's heads were generally above it, but knees and elbows ached, breathing became labored, hearts pounded." (p.132-133)

McPhee's combination of tour-de-force writing with amazingly highlighted details of the Icelandic fight against the lava, and the ultimate preservation of the town is beyond impressive. I can see why his books are used as models for students of expository prose. 

I'm already fascinated with volcanic activity, so I also appreciated McPhee's digression into the history of the volcanic activity on the Big Island of Hawaii (where I've also traveled) and his comparison with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the fate of ancient Pompeii, which he compares to the Icelandic events. Of course Iceland has experienced other high-profile eruptions since 1973, and more are inevitable. I'm most sympathetic to them as well as to this week's victims of the eruption of the volcano in the Pacific island nation of Tonga. Real life is dangerous in so many ways!

Review and all photos © 2022 mae sander. 

Orange Juice

Orange juice from Whole Foods Market (screen shot January 8, 2021)
My preference is for half-gallon cartons of pasteurized orange juice.

Throughout the pandemic, I've been ordering Whole Foods orange juice through the above page at amazon.com.  Evidently, a lot of people are drinking orange juice this year. While sales of orange juice in the US had been declining for years, in 2020 they increased by around 10%, partly because there's a general belief that orange juice improves one's health -- which everyone is worried about. Also, more people have been eating breakfast at home, including more orange juice. (Source: Citrus Industry Magazine, January 8, 2021)

John McPhee's book Oranges tells the history of orange groves and orange juice production in Florida, as well as the history of oranges in many other times and places. In the 1960s, when McPhee wrote, the Florida orange-growing industry was completing the transition from producing and shipping fresh fruit up the east coast to producing frozen concentrate. 

The invention of frozen orange juice had caused huge change: while formerly, growers shipped boxes of fresh oranges to consumers, they now sent most of their produce to nearby factories, in which the more imaginative businessmen among them were investing their money. Instead of selling fruit whose flavor varied from season to season, from tree to tree, and even from one section of an orange to another, the factories blended multiple types of concentrated, processed, frozen juice (which tastes, says McPhee, like a blend of sugar and aspirin) with a little of the real thing. Small or large cans of juice concentrate became ubiquitous in supermarkets and home freezers.

McPhee wrote about consumers who had gladly switched over from squeezing oranges to reconstituting the syrupy stuff from the frozen cans. He discussed the sociology of orange-juice drinking: the blue-collar families of his day were still buying canned juice, while the educated consumer had embraced the frozen, and hardly anyone still squeezed their own. Neither the juice box nor the pasteurized OJ that's now most popular had yet been invented.

Researching his book, McPhee traveled the byways of rural Florida -- remember, before Disney. He observed that even the remaining roadside orange juice stands that he found were serving reconstituted juice concentrate. Further, his interviews with growers, pickers, and factory owners revealed that many orange groves were being cleared for new land use: the NASA facility at Cape Canaveral was in the process of being built on former groves. Finally, he wrote about the frenzy of effort to create new chemical orange juice surrogates. Add water to some crystals they were inventing -- they thought you would get orange juice. (I think they were actually creating Tang, but that was still in the future and they were optimistic.)

My orange juice for breakfast almost every day.
The Whole Foods orange juice carton has a new design.

When I was a child, everyone in my family had a small glass of orange juice with breakfast. My sister, brother, and I had been given "baby orange juice," that is, strained and sweetened orange juice, in our nursing bottles from something like the age of 6 months. It was a standard practice then, but is now considered very bad for babies. We survived.

My mother, like many people, switched from squeezing oranges to reconstituting frozen juice when this innovation became available in the 1950s. Some time in the 1970s, fresh-squeezed juice became a kind of a fad. Small markets or restaurants would have juice squeezers so they could make fresh juice on demand for their customers. Soon, bigger beverage bottlers began to offer fresh juice for the refrigerator aisles in the grocery store. This was much better-tasting than frozen juice. Then the orange processing industry developed pasteurized juice, which was less expensive and had a longer shelf-life but still tasted good. I continue to purchase and drink it. I guess I’ve been a very conventional consumer all my life!

Florida growers were the largest supplier of orange juice to Americans until 2017, when Brazil overtook them. Brazil currently leads the world in production of orange juice with nearly three times US production. Many Florida groves have been converted to other land use, like subdivisions of retirement homes. Florida citrus growers have struggled unsuccessfully against citrus diseases, and occasional frosts and hurricanes have destroyed orange trees over the years. Moreover, the price of Brazilian juice is lower; thus, many bottlers no longer buy American juice. The two cartons of orange juice in my refrigerator list Mexico -- the world's third-largest producer -- as the country of origin. (Statistics on global production here.)

Hesperides by
Samuel Tolkowsky. (link)

Over the years, I've read several other books about the history of citrus fruit. My favorites are McPhee's book (which I first read in 2008 and then In 2016, with my culinary history reading group, and again this week) and a very old and hard-to-find book titled Hesperides: A History of the Culture and Use of Citrus Fruits by Samuel Tolkowsky. This extensive book covers the history of entire citrus family from ancient times up until the book’s publication in 1938 -- a very interesting cultural study!

When my culinary reading group read Oranges, we particularly admired John McPhee's style and his captivating way of portraying the many people in the orange growing business in Florida. His sketches of the lives of advertising men, grove owners, fruit pickers, and many others enlivened his description of the history of citrus in Florida. Though out of date (the book has not been revised since its publication in 1966) the book brings a lot of the business of citrus to life. We wished there would be an update to tell us about modern issues like labor fairness, water consumption, climate change, and fluctuating demand from consumers of orange juice. 

I'm sharing my orange juice memories with Elizabeth and the other bloggers who like to talk about drinks once a week. This post is based on my previous writings about McPhee's book,  blogged here and here as well as current thoughts, so it is copyright © 2008-2021 by mae sander.

Grocery Stores

Recent reading: Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America by Michael Ruhlman. Much in it is familiar to habitual readers of food books (like me):

• Ruhlman's analysis of processed food and what's in it that shouldn't be.
• His tales of conflict between the profit-driven aspirations of big agriculture and the popular dreams of smaller, more sustainably grown meat and produce.
• And his discussions of the constantly changing advice and research about what food is good for you. I like his observation on this: "There’s little disagreement that Americans have a hopelessly neurotic relationship with what they consume." (p. 80). 

Familiar authors are his frequent sources: Michael Pollan, Marian Nestle, Mark Kurlansky, Eric Schlosser, Calvin Trillin, Richard Wrangham, John McPhee, Michael Moss, Dan Barber, and others -- authors whose books and articles I've read. He has predictable chapters with titles like "No Food is Healthy," "A Few of the Twenty Thousand New Products for Your Consideration," and "The Cooking Animal."

Besides the familiar, however, a lot of the material in the book is different from these previous writers' stories. Refreshingly, the center of his book is Cleveland, Ohio. I'm always annoyed at the New-York-centeredness of so many food books. This is midwestern!

One interesting point: in a medium-size midwestern city -- like Cleveland -- typical American transportation has had a big effect on how people shop:

"One of the under-recognized facts of American real estate development is how our modes of transportation are the fundamental determiners of the way we create our residential and commercial spaces. The advent of the streetcar... brought about the creation of America’s first suburbs— with sidewalks and shopping districts within walking distance.... Spaces that were developed after the automobile became a predominant feature of American life are far from city centers and spread out. It was the automobile, and highways, that led to suburban sprawl. .... 

"'From 1948 to 1963 large chains increased their share of the nation’s grocery business from 35 percent to almost half,' writes Harvey Levenstein in Paradox of Plenty. 'As early as 1956, the independent corner grocery store, while still visible, was a relic of the past.'" (pp. 51-52). 

Ruhlman presents his analysis of the grocery business through the experience of one family-owned grocery chain in Cleveland, along with his own memories of how his family shopped for food. Its current owners, the Heinen brothers are his main subject. Grocery also sketches the family background of the buisness -- the Heinens' grandfather and father expanded from a small butcher shop to a small market to a chain of supermarkets. A more general outline of the American retail food business supports the history of the Heinens' stores beginning with A&P and a few other 19th century institutions, and continuing up to recent changes in supply and demand for organic produce, natural meat, and similar goods.

While describing the grocery business from the inside, Ruhlman traveled with the Heinen brothers and some of their employees as they evaluated new trends and products at grocery trade shows. He accompanies them on visits to farms and ranches where owners are trying to return to traditional agricultural practices, and learns about the challenges of non-standard meat ranching. Also, Ruhlman discussed alternative health products with a doctor who advises the Heinens on the pills and supplements that they sell.

A happy memory!

In particular, I enjoyed the description of touring the small-scale cheese makers of Marin County, California, especially one that I remember visiting years ago: "Marin French Cheese, which bills itself as the oldest continuously operating cheese maker in the country, dating to 1865." (p. 270). When I can find it, I love their Camembert, called "Rouge et Noir"!

Ruhlman gives a summary the economic challenges of the food industry in America in the context of this one local business. He describes the details of how they make money on each section of the store. I enjoyed learning about the issues that particularly concern the local, family-run business. Unfortunately I can't enjoy the results of such efforts: the family chain where I used to shop was sold to Kroger's several years ago, leaving my town, Ann Arbor, with only national chains.

Personal memories of Ruhlman's lifelong experiences grocery shopping -- much of it done at the Heinen family stores create a vivid background to his descriptions. His own grocery-shopping habits contrast with those of his father in the 1960s through the 1980s. His father loved grocery stores and did much of the shopping for his own family during this time. Among many big changes since then: many people now purchase food for their homes at many stores, and don't stay loyal to one main store as was his father's habit. As a result, owners must constantly find new products and presentations to keep customers coming back.

Like Ruhlman's father, my father did almost all of our family grocery shopping.
Here's a photo of him in 1963, taking bags of groceries out of our Rambler
station wagon. At that time, he was probably shopping at A&P.

In reading Grocery, I noticed a few annoying errors of fact, a few slips of editing -- like in the passage above, Ruhlman says the streetcars became important "in the first and second decades of the nineteenth century" (p. 51) when he clearly means a time much later when electric power had become available. Or he says "granola doesn’t need much (if any) fat"  (p. 81) which doesn't correspond to average granola nutrition facts: its fat calories go up to 50% of the total. Or he says inaccurately: "Whole Foods and the like had a wide range of organic foods (but you couldn’t find Cheerios there)" (p. 17) -- Whole Foods definitely sells Cheerios, which were made non-GMO in 2014 probably just so that Whole Foods would keep selling them.

But on the whole, I liked Ruhlman's book. Some of my favorite passages deal with the remarkably rapid changes in what shoppers want to get from their shopping and their willingness to shop around, as I mentioned. Constant reaction to change is required by his successful example, Heinen's, and other similar stores. Clearly, flexibility and innovation are required if a market is going to stay competitive in their very low-profit business. The Heinen brothers are aware of factors affecting the producers, not just the consumers -- presentation of these factors keeps Ruhlman's narrative interesting. For example when it comes to organic or naturally raised meat, one of their rancher-suppliers says of them:

"Heinen’s gets it. ...They take the majority of the animal, so we can do what we do and raise beef, and we’re not just pulling tenderloins out. They utilize different beef cuts and that helps make us sustainable. So when people talk about sustainability, it’s the chefs and the retail buyer just as much as it’s us on the ranch utilizing the compost." (pp. 190-191). 

Same point made by Dan Barber in The Third Plate, but more convincingly!

So many changes! For example, the implications of hydroponic growing of fruit and vegetables that can be hydroponically grown. Ruhlman lists:

"blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, cranberries, huckleberries, green beans, tomatoes, coffee, grapes; vine vegetables such as squash, pumpkins, okra, cantaloupe, and watermelons; peanuts, beets, carrots, onions, potatoes; critical grain crops such as barley, corn, wheat, and rice; and of course dozens of leaf lettuces and even more herbs." (pp. 227-228).

Another big change: demand for ready-to-serve food. The grocery counters where people can buy food that requires no kitchen prep whatsoever are taking up more and more space in markets. From rotisserie chickens to pizza ovens to hot food that's equivalent to take-out from a restaurant, his example family chain and most other grocery stores keep developing recipes and specialties to keep their customers coming back. I was fascinated by the economic implications of selling prepared, ready-to-serve foods: according to the Heinlen brothers, it's impossible to actually make a profit on this department of the store, but it's absolutely necessary to have it!

Ruhlman's book also made me think about how fast the grocery business has been changing even since he published the book last year. Grocery appeared before amazon.com merged with Whole Foods, so he obviously didn't discuss the implications of this merger, which more recent commentators have speculated about quite a lot, and before the meal kit fad which is now going into stores (see my recent post). Who knows what's next?

In a couple of days, I'll be posting a follow-up to this post with observations about food in my kitchen, and how the many issues Ruhlman mentions affect me directly.

Update, July 16, 2018: the follow-up post is Reading "Grocery" in My Kitchen. The Culinary History Reading Group chose Grocery as the July selection.

"Hesperides" -- A Very Obscure Book

Library copy of Hesperides.

Hesperides: A History of the Culture and Use of Citrus Fruits by Samuel Tolkowsky is hard to find, though fortunately for me, I have checked out the library copy shown above.

Title page.

I find the obscurity of this book surprising, as it's full of fascinating and useful information. John McPhee cites it in his book Oranges; in fact, I think he used a variety of information from it in his historical section. Tolkowsky begins in ancient times, with the origins of citrus trees on the slopes of the Himalayas and in the boundary areas between India and China, and a grapefruit-like fruit in the Malay archipelago. The earliest written records of citrus are in China in a compendium dated around 500 BCE, including a number of older works that refer to the fruit. (p. 6)

Citrus spread through Asia and North Africa, and eventually to Europe, as Tolkowsky documents in several chapters. I found the descriptions of the introduction of citrus fruits into ancient Israel especially interesting. Tolkowsky traces the customs of the holiday of Succoth -- the Feast of Tabernacles -- to the influence of the Persians during their exile in the sixth century, and the introduction of these customs when they returned thanks to the decree of Cyrus. At this point, as the citron was as yet not known in Babylonia, the fruit that served in the ritual was not an etrog (citron), but a cedar cone, which appears in a number of images from that era.

By the second century of this era, the Jewish writings in the Mishnah definitely interpret the ritual fruit as an etrog; the Jewish-Roman historian Josephus also says this, saying "it was the 'Persian apple' that was used by the Jews during the Feast of Tabernacles." Tolkowsky continues the story: "The very earliest documentary evidence of the citron in Jewish sources is found in the representation of this fruit on coins struck by Simon the Maccabee in the fourth year of the 'Redemption of Zion,' that is, in 136 BC. If citrons were extensively grown in Palestine at the time, it seems probable that the center of the industry was at Jaffa." (p. 53)

Simon the Maccabee issued copper coins (above) bearing the picture of a citron
together with the bundle of myrtle, willow and palm branches prescribed
for use at the Feast of Tabernacles.  

Because Simon the Maccabee was the only Jewish ruler who depicted the etrog on his coins, Tolkowsky believes that Simon was the one who introduced the citron in place of the cedar cone.

Above: a bronze seal with Jewish symbols including an etrog. Below: a decorated glass vase including
an etrog and other fruits. From the Roman era.

Citrons were the earliest citrus fruits introduced into Europe, and Tolkowsky includes several chapters describing how later, oranges and lemons arrived in Roman times. Tolkowsky's illustrations include many Roman mosaics and other art works depicting oranges and lemons.

A detail of a mosaic from Pompeii.

Several chapters describe the ways that citrus fruits appear symbolically and literally in European art and literature from Roman times until the Renaissance and early modern period. The development of culinary uses for the fruits are very interesting also. Hesperides is rich in historical information that's not easy to find.

Some notes on Tolkowsky:

I managed to find a brief memoir of Samuel Tolkowsky and his family in Raphael Patai's memoir Journeyman in Jerusalem: Memories and Letters, 1933-1947. Patai (a well-known author) describes the "at home" Fridays at the home of Samuel Tolkowsky and his wife, beginning in 1933. Patai, a young man newly arrived in Jerusalem, met the family in 1933, when Samuel Tolkowsky was 47 years old. Tolkowsky, Patai says, was born in Belgium to Polish-Jewish parents, served as a member of the Zionist Political Committee under Chaim Weizmann in London during World War I, and settled in Palestine in 1919. During World War II, he headed the Citrus Control and Marketing Board set up by the British government there. Patai eventually married Naomi, the Tolkowsky's daughter. (source)

A family tree posted at Geni gives Tolkowsky's dates as June 27, 1886, to December 19, 1965, and lists his parents, wife, and children.

Tolkowsky was the author of a number of other books that are even more obscure than Hesperides. Examples from google book search: The Gateway of Palestine: A History of Jaffa (1925) and The Jewish Colonisation in Palestine, Its History and Its Prospects (1914).

Even Wikipedia seems to have nothing about Hesperides or its author! Several years ago, Hesperides was listed in amazon.com but no longer seems to be there, as I guess they never had a copy come up for sale. A few years ago one sold at Bonham's for £312 (US$ 443), according to the Bonham's website.

The Mysterious Orange

Know’st thou the land where lemon-trees do bloom,

And oranges like gold in leafy gloom;

A gentle wind from deep blue heaven blows,

The myrtle thick, and high the laurel grows?*

This poem by J.W.von Goethe, published in 1795, expresses the longing of a person from the north for the beauties of Italy and the Mediterranean climate. Why did Goethe use citrus fruits as the exotic image of the far-off places being dreamed about?

From the Unicorn Tapestries at the Cluny Museum, photo taken 2016.
Oranges always seem to have mythic significance.

Beginning in Classical Antiquity, lemons and oranges have taken on a variety of meanings in art, religion, literature, and cuisine. Citrus trees were raised for their beauty in climates where they couldn't bear much fruit. Orange or lemon juice was used as a sour or bitter condiment before sweet varieties of oranges were cultivated and eaten raw. Dishes like duck with oranges have been popular since the Renaissance.

Ottolenghi's creation of chicken with clementines and fennel
is in the spirit of historic dishes combining citrus with duck or other fowl.

Citrus history is full of mysteries. Just when did each variety of lemon, lime, shaddock, grapefruit, sweet orange, blood orange, bitter orange, navel orange, tangerine, clementine, manderin, satsuma, kumquat, bergamot, or citron appear, and who distributed the fruit and planted the trees? Each variety has its own history, beginning with the origins of citrus in the Himalayas at least 2,000 years ago. Some varieties date from these early times; others originated as recently as the late 19th century. Tracing the names used at different times in various languages helps to learn the history, but speculation is often the only response to such complex questions.

The Orangerie at Versailles, photo taken 2013. Orange trees were loved
for their beauty in gardens, and cultivated for appearance as well as for fruit.

In northern climates, oranges and other citrus fruits were always scarce, and normally only available to the richest people. Palaces and chateaus often had an orangerie, where citrus could be grown out of season; the one at Versailles was particularly large. Royal gardeners grew citrus trees in large boxes, requiring huge numbers of laborers to care for them and move them indoors and out depending on the season.

The large fruit is a citron that grew in Janet's garden in Israel.
 With the citron: lemons from the market. Photo taken 2016.

In the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, oranges were associated visually with images of the Madonna,** and often appear in icons painted for churches or private use. Pious Jewish citrus merchants, beginning as early as Roman times, supplied citrons for the fall holiday of Succoth -- the citron had replaced the cedar cone (a similarly-shaped fruit) during around the first century before the common era. By the early modern era, these dealers were influential in creating markets for citrus, as well as supplying citrons for ritual use.

Orange groves around the Mediterranean in Spain, North Africa, Jaffa, and Italy constantly grew in economic importance. English crusaders first saw oranges when they embarked from their ships in Jaffa. Columbus brought orange trees to the Caribbean on one of his later voyages. Early modern travelers like Goethe dreamed of lemons and oranges in Italy while travelers in the 19th century saw them at exotic places like the Alhambra. By the beginning of the 20th century, oranges were sold at Christmas even for middle class buyers, and soon the railroads and cargo ships brought citrus to European and American cities year-around.

1920s orange crate label.

Orange groves in California and Florida developed as big agriculture starting in the late 19th century. Rail transport and cargo ships made it possible to deliver large quantities of citrus to American consumers in cities, and oranges became the miracle fruit for almost all classes, not just the well-off. Canned juice, then frozen juice, then fresh-pack juice were developed as essentially industrial products, with widespread advertising campaigns to create demand and convince the public of the great health benefits of drinking orange juice. Labor as always is an issue, with orange pickers working long hours for little pay.

My culinary history reading group discussed John McPhee's book about the history of oranges in Florida in the twentieth century, and I went back to read three other books about the history of oranges. Our group particularly admired John McPhee's style and his captivating way of portraying the many people in the orange growing business in Florida. His sketches of the lives of advertising men, grove owners, fruit pickers, and many others enlivened his description of the history of citrus in Florida. Though out of date (the book has not been revised since its publication in 1966) the book brings a lot of the business of citrus to life. We wish there would be an update to tell us about modern issues like labor challenges, water consumption, climate change, and changing demand from consumers of orange juice.

Booklist on which I based my very brief summary of millennia of citrus history:

• John McPhee, Oranges. Published 1966. (I wrote about it here.)
• Douglas Cazaux Sackman, Orange Empire: California and the Fruits of Eden. Published 2005. (I wrote about it here.)
• S. Tolkowsky, Hesperides: A History of the Culture and Use of Citrus Fruits. Published 1938.
• Pierre Laszlo, Citrus: A History. Published 2007. (I wrote about it here and here.)

NOTES:

*For anyone who is more knowledgeable in German than I am the original is:

Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn,

Im dunkeln Laub die Gold-Orangen glühn,

Ein sanfter Wind vom blauen Himmel weht, 

Die Myrte still und hoch der Lorbeer steht? 

Kennst du es wohl?

Dahin! dahin

Möcht ich mit dir, o mein Geliebter, ziehn.

**Below is the painting "Madonna of the Victories" by Mantegna, where the Virgin is surrounded by garlands of oranges and lemons. (Left, the painting; right, a detail of the garlands.)

More about peanut butter than you want to know: "Creamy & Crunchy"

When I was around ten years old, I ate a Peter Pan peanut butter sandwich, no jelly, for lunch every day -- on Wonder Bread. Peanut butter came in a reusable drinking glass with a lid that had to be pried up, and that summer every lid had a different image of a character from Walt Disney's movie Peter Pan. I collected something like 13 of 14 lids -- my favorite was Tinker Bell. Of course I don't have the lids any more, but I found one picture (above) of a few of my least-favored lids that were once sold on E-Bay.

When I started reading Creamy & Crunchy: An Informal History of Peanut Butter, the All-American Food by Jon Krampner, I expected to learn more about this and other popular jingles and advertising campaigns for various brands of the incredibly popular spread. But instead of a review of what I think of as popular culture, I found a pretty plodding history of the agricultural and industrial processes used to make peanut butter. Krampner never mentions the Disney promotions at all -- just a bit about advertising Skippy and Jif. He documents various salmonella contamination scandals and regulatory issues at length, which is reasonable, but doesn't really convey what makes peanut butter so popular that people keep eating it anyway.

The plodding wouldn't be so bad, but the book is incredibly repetitive. For example, the author must have mentioned 10 times that the boll weevil's destruction of the cotton industry around the turn of the 20th century was a cause of the increase in peanut farming in the South. The explanations of the various chemical processes that have been devised to make peanut butter taste creamier are repeated again and again -- maybe there are a few details different, but only a food chemist could care. He constantly re-hashes the history of the early families whose plants made peanut butter. Sometimes I had the feeling I was reading the same sentence over and over again.

I got through the whole book, always hoping it would be more like three books Krampner mentioned as his models: Mark Kurlansky's Cod, John McPhee's Oranges, and Steve Almond's Candyfreak. Those are really good books. I wish this one had come up to the standard they set.

"Oranges"

Today I read Oranges by John McPhee. Published in 1967, and still in print, the book is a little like a time capsule. The main focus of the book is on the Florida orange industry of 40 to 50 years ago.

In the 1960s, the Florida orange-growing industry was in transition from producing and shipping fresh fruit up the east coast. The invention of frozen orange juice had just made a huge change. Instead of selecting and packing fruit, growers now sent them to nearby factories, in which the more imaginative businessmen among them were investing their money.

Instead of juice or fruit whose flavor varied from season to season, from tree to tree, and even from one orange section to another, the factories blended multiple types of concentrated, processed, frozen juice (which tastes, he says, like a blend of sugar and aspirin) with a little of the real thing.

At this point in the sixties, consumers had gladly switched over from squeezing oranges to reconstituting the stuff in the little frozen cans. McPhee discussed the sociology of this: the blue-collar families of his day were still drinking canned juice, while the educated consumer had embraced the frozen, and hardly anyone still squeezed their own. And the juice box, like the pasteurized OJ that's now most popular, was as yet unthought of.

As McPhee traveled the byways of rural Florida (remember, before Disney), he found that even the orange juice stands that remained out of a sense of tradition were serving reconstituted juice. Further, his interviews with growers, pickers, and factory owners revealed that many orange groves were being cleared for new land use -- the NASA facility at Cape Canavaral was in the process of being built on former groves. Above all, he wrote about the frenzy of effort to create new chemical orange juice surrogates. Add water to some crystals they were inventing -- they thought you would get orange juice. (I think they got Tang, but it was in the future and they were still optimistic.)

The material on the Florida industry is augmented by McPhee's brief -- though well-written -- overview of the history and social uses of oranges. He describes their origins in China, mentions the orange as an art motif especially in the Renaissance, presents the love of French kings and their peers for Orangeries, and says a few general words about orange juice drinking habits among various cultures of the world. Good job!

The top image here shows the current edition, which I have not seen. The second image is of my library book, a first edition from 1967. The graphic choices of the two covers support my time-capsule viewpoint.