The Herald - The Herald Magazine
Feast of midwinter Now is a time for treats – but not if they cost the earth
NO effort or expense has ever been spared for the midwinter feast, with history showing that the more exotic and hard to find the ingredients, the better. What passed for treats in the past, though, are pretty common and consequently fairly cheap these days, so we need a new kind of exotic and hard to find.
Meat has always taken centre stage. Boar’s head feasts date back to pagan times, and were eagerly adopted by Christians and linked in to their nativity story. Swan, goose and peacock were gradually added to the menu. As with most of today’s ingredients, turkey is fairly low cost and frankly not the tastiest meat.
Although vegetables have always been considered only fit for peasants, fresh fruit from warmer climes had cachet. Of these, the first were oranges. It’s thought Seville oranges, the Citrus aurantium we now use for marmalade, first appeared in England at Beddington Park, Croydon, where they were grown from seed Sir Walter Raleigh reputedly gave the owner in 1560.
But it took another century for sweet oranges, Citrus x sinensis, to reach the British Isles. This led to the invention of special new greenhouses.
As soon as these orangeries were ten a penny in every big house kitchen garden, attention turned to an even tougher nut to crack: the pineapple. This tropical fruit needs light and ventilation, as well as the heat required by oranges. Oranges were easy to grow for Christmas, but pineapples ripened naturally here in July and August. Undeterred, no time or money was spared to let the best head gardeners prepare the fruit for the Christmas table.
The first detailed instructions on pineapple growing appeared in 1721, but it took several decades of experiments to work out the ideal techniques. Vast glasshouses were developed to house up to 120 pineapples and, since the fruit took two years to grow, were expensive, especially because of a crippling glass tax. Anyone who was anyone needed a pineapple house, so huge quantities of propagating material had to be imported from the West Indies.
This early global trade introduced two of our first alien pests: thrips and mealy bugs. Head gardeners were pretty gung-ho in their war against pests, taking pineapples out of their pots and immersing them in tobacco water for 24 hours. Other recipes included water, soft soap and quick silver. Gardeners were expendable when any of these chemicals damaged their health.
Dangerous as these methods were, they’re chicken feed compared to some modern techniques. Costa Rica is, by far, the largest producer of pineapples, but it’s been estimated by researchers at its national university that no less than 20kg of herbicides and pesticides are applied per hectare. The soil is completely sterilised, the ground water so contaminated that residents have to collect their water from tankers. The chemicals used are all banned in the EU.
Some cheap Christmas goodies come at a crippling environmental cost. I could go on, but as it’s Christmas I’ll bite my tongue. I do believe locally and sustainably produced food is more precious and, yes, exotic than so-called affordable products transported here from halfway across the world.
Perhaps inevitably, any food from the garden or a window box trumps all. Freshly dug or picked veg or herbs will cheer your soul as well as your taste buds. Get some much-needed fresh air by harvesting some of your dinner before overindulging. It is as challenging now as it was a couple of centuries ago to grow and store fresh fruit for Christmas, so organic or Fairtrade is the best alternative.