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fallout from online study
Jan. 6th, 2014 05:02 pmOne 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.
