fallout from online study
Jan. 6th, 2014 05:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadgerOne of the exercises in an online class I'm taking is to research and write a *brief* (1200 character) post on a foodstuff one likes: was it available in 15th century England (the subject of the class)? What was its provenance? Some people clearly aren't in the class to participate (one response was "McDonald's burgers. No.") But I found it a rather interesting quick task.
I picked cherries, as one of my friends (looks at redactrice) is very fond of them. Turns out that this is a more complicated topic than I would have thought.
Two authors I found through GoogleBooks were Evelyn Cecil (Mrs.) and Alicia Amherst, both of whom wrote histories of gardening in the 1890s. Now, I tend to be a little leery of 19th century popular histories, as they are often full of fiction and fable (and inventions of the author's imagination) dressed up as "long-repeated local folklore" or "according to several ancient authors" (without names or published works). But these ladies seem to have done their homework. Both agree that cherries were brought to Britain by the Romans (or, at least that a predominant strain was; Amherst asserts that cherries are native to the British Isles). Though many Roman plantings and gardens were overgrown by hardier plants or left to straggle into ruin, cherries seem to have been popular enough that locals continued to cultivate them. The Saxons in particular seem to have liked them.
Fast forward to the medieval period, and cherries seem to have become widespread and popular fruit trees. Cecil quotes a 12th century abbot from Cirencester praising them (or praising God for creating them), among other fruit trees. Norwich Cathedral Priory is said to have had an "orto cersor" or cherry garden. William Langland, author of Piers Plowman, and John Gower, in his Confessio Amantis, mention cherry harvesting time, and the monk and poet John Lydgate compares the world to a cherry fair.
That's just what I've found about their cultivation, in a quick look, but I imagine one could find out a good deal more from seeing how they were used in cooking and in cordials. Cherries got their biggest boost, allegedly, under Henry VIII, who encouraged commercial planting of cherries. Kent was, at one time, home to massive cherry orchards, and accounts of towns and gardens throughout the 16th and 17th century are filled with cherry trees.
Alas, because cherries grow high, they are, of berries, one of the hardest to protect against birds and the most difficult to harvest (resembling more the larger fruit like apples in this). For these reasons, their cultivation has fallen off in England in preference to the import of foreign cherries. Perhaps now, like the Romans who brought the cherry to England, Britons are their cherries from Anatolia, home of Kerasous, the Eden of cherries.
I picked cherries, as one of my friends (looks at redactrice) is very fond of them. Turns out that this is a more complicated topic than I would have thought.
Two authors I found through GoogleBooks were Evelyn Cecil (Mrs.) and Alicia Amherst, both of whom wrote histories of gardening in the 1890s. Now, I tend to be a little leery of 19th century popular histories, as they are often full of fiction and fable (and inventions of the author's imagination) dressed up as "long-repeated local folklore" or "according to several ancient authors" (without names or published works). But these ladies seem to have done their homework. Both agree that cherries were brought to Britain by the Romans (or, at least that a predominant strain was; Amherst asserts that cherries are native to the British Isles). Though many Roman plantings and gardens were overgrown by hardier plants or left to straggle into ruin, cherries seem to have been popular enough that locals continued to cultivate them. The Saxons in particular seem to have liked them.
Fast forward to the medieval period, and cherries seem to have become widespread and popular fruit trees. Cecil quotes a 12th century abbot from Cirencester praising them (or praising God for creating them), among other fruit trees. Norwich Cathedral Priory is said to have had an "orto cersor" or cherry garden. William Langland, author of Piers Plowman, and John Gower, in his Confessio Amantis, mention cherry harvesting time, and the monk and poet John Lydgate compares the world to a cherry fair.
That's just what I've found about their cultivation, in a quick look, but I imagine one could find out a good deal more from seeing how they were used in cooking and in cordials. Cherries got their biggest boost, allegedly, under Henry VIII, who encouraged commercial planting of cherries. Kent was, at one time, home to massive cherry orchards, and accounts of towns and gardens throughout the 16th and 17th century are filled with cherry trees.
Alas, because cherries grow high, they are, of berries, one of the hardest to protect against birds and the most difficult to harvest (resembling more the larger fruit like apples in this). For these reasons, their cultivation has fallen off in England in preference to the import of foreign cherries. Perhaps now, like the Romans who brought the cherry to England, Britons are their cherries from Anatolia, home of Kerasous, the Eden of cherries.
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no subject
Date: 2014-01-06 11:36 pm (UTC)I think I might have chosen bread, which is also a curious subject, in terms of types of bread, baking methodologies, and the classist issues surrounding who was able to afford which type.
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Date: 2014-01-06 11:56 pm (UTC)Other books they mentioned were
Le Menagier de Paris
Le Viandier de Taillevent
This discussion was very popular! Over 500 posts so far.
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Date: 2014-01-07 12:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-07 01:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-07 02:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-07 04:44 am (UTC)I'd always heard that cherries were popularized by the Romans (who brought them from Turkey), so it makes sense that they'd have brought them to Britain. I wonder whether they're also responsible for all of the cherry cultivation I saw in Provence.
"What have the Romans ever done for us?"
Date: 2014-01-07 02:25 pm (UTC)There are apparently *two* major species, Prunus cerasus (the sweet cherry, about which most of my sources were talking) and Prunus avium (the sour cherry or wild cherry), which comes from much the same places but is also native throughout most of Europe, northern Africa, and northern and central Asia. These are definitely native to the British Isles (though it may be that P. cerasus, in some varieties, is too).
Then, to top it off, there is another species, P. padus, which is native to *northern* Europe and used medicinally but not eaten as a fruit in Europe (possible because some parts of the plant have substances toxic to mammals) though it is eaten in Asia. That is confusing known as "bird cherry" among other things, which is a name one would have thought would be saved for the P. avium (="bird cherry" in Latin).
So I think what the Romans may have brought around, like Henry VIII later on, was not the cherry qua cherry, or even a specific species, but a subspecies or cultivar that had been developed to be especially sweet and tasty.
*sigh* As in every other field of historic research, the answer is, "It's not as simple as that..." :-)
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Date: 2014-01-07 09:28 pm (UTC)