Quinces

For this post I am going to break my rule of literary chronology, leaving the early 18^th century novel for the time being in order to revisit the late 16^th century and an author who has featured frequently in this blog, namely Mr William Shakespeare.  And the cause of this literary rewind is the quince, the strange, knobbly pear-like fruit which, as the Observer food writer Nigel Slater says, “can’t be eaten raw” and is “a devil to peel”.[1]  We have a quince tree in the garden and about a month ago my landlady challenged me to find some literary/culinary uses for the plethora of fruit that ripen and rot very quickly if not picked and made good use of; I like a challenge, so the research began.

Quinces come from the same family as apples and pears.  They are thought to have originated in parts of Asia, including Armenia, Georgia, Afghanistan and Azerbaijan, and were subsequently introduced to parts of the Middle East and eastern and central Europe, including Syria, Lebanon, Turkey and Greece.  The quince’s early arrival in the countries of the Middle East has led to speculation that references to fruit in the Bible which have often been translated as “apple” may in fact be references to quince: examples include The Song of Solomon 2:3 “As an apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among young men” and most famously the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in Genesis 3 with which the snake tempts Eve, and Eve then seduces Adam.[2]  Though were the snake to have tempted Eve with a quince, we have to assume he would have cooked it first as it’s impossible to believe that Eve would have succumbed to the sour inedible raw fruit!  Once cooked though, with the addition of sugar or honey, the quince softens and becomes far more appetising. 

The Luxury of Time

One of the most interesting features of Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe is the detailed accounts of how the protagonist learns to survive on an uninhabited desert island.  Once he has built and furnished his shelter, he begins a journal (using paper and ink that he had found on the wrecked ship) and, through this, documents his attempts to build his own version of English society on the island.  He describes making different shelters, building a boat, civilizing a savage – Man Friday whom he rescues from cannibals - and, most importantly for my purposes, growing and cooking food.

In my last post – see http://pagetoplate.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/food-survival-manual.html - I wrote about the goats that live abundantly on the island which are Crusoe’s principal source of meat – he does also eat turtle and wild fowl – and his only source of dairy food.  But whilst the goats provide ready food – they just need to be captured or shot, then cooked – other food requires time.  Fortunately Crusoe – who spends 28 years on the island – has plenty of that.

Food: A Survival Manual

The summer sun and the holidays mean I haven’t blogged for a few weeks.  But whilst I was sitting on my tropical holiday island – well, okay, the Costa Brava – one of my chosen books for holiday reading was the account of a man’s experience on a desert island, namely Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.

First published in 1719, Robinson Crusoe is one of the earliest novels written in English.  A first-person account of the protagonist’s experience of being shipwrecked on an island off the coast of South America for more than 28 years, the novel can be read in a number of ways.

Food for Angels

In my last post on Milton's Paradise Lost I referred to the episode where, prior to the Fall, the archangel Raphael visits Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and dines with them - see http://pagetoplate.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/forbidden-fruit.html

Eve crushes grapes to make a non-alcoholic drink and makes mead - presumably also without alcohol - from berries, and also "from sweet kernels pressed / ... tempers dulcet creams" (Book V, ll. 346-47).  I assume that by kernels Milton means nuts and that Eve makes some form of nut cream to feed Raphael.  

As luck would have it, there are seventeenth-century recipes for almond cream, a dish that I am familiar with. The Accomplish'd Lady's Delight In Preserving, Physick, Beautifying, and Cookery - how's that for the title of a cookery book! - published in 1675, provides the following recipe:  

Forbidden Fruit

In my previous two posts on Jacobean revenge drama I explored the way food adopts more negative connotations, being used for nefarious purposes or to symbolise corruption (see   http://pagetoplate.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/apricots.html and  http://pagetoplate.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/the-corrupting-effects-of-food.html).  In Paradise Lost (published 1667), John Milton retells in a long epic poem the story of the fall of Adam and Eve, a narrative with food at its heart.  As originally narrated in chapter 3 of the Biblical book of Genesis the serpent, the most cunning of all God's creation, tempts Eve to eat from the one tree in the Garden of Eden that God has forbidden her and Adam from eating from, namely the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Eve subsequently persuades Adam to eat; cursed by God, Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden and sin is brought into the world. 

In his twelve book epic treatment of this short Biblical myth, Milton indulges the reader with long descriptions of the naturally-occurring fruits in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve’s pre-lapsarian meals and then the actual consumption of the forbidden fruit.  In Book V the archangel Raphael visits Adam and Eve, and Eve – like a model 17^th century housewife – prepares a meal. 

She gathers, tribute large, and on the board

Heaps with unsparing hand; for drink the grape

She crushes, inoffensive must, and meaths

From many a berry, and from sweet kernels pressed

She tempers dulcet creams.  (ll. 343-47)

There is an emphasis on abundance – food grows plentifully in the Garden of Eden, and earlier in Book IV Adam and Eve are described as eating nectarines which the “complaint boughs / yielded them” (ll. 332-333); the food is freely offered up to them.  The only food referred to is fruit, and no actual cooking is involved (there is no reference to heat being applied to the fruit).  Instead, Eve crushes grapes to make unfermented (non-alcoholic) juice, makes mead from berries and from seeds or nuts produces some type of sweet cream.   

 Raphael dines with Adam and Eve from a painting by William Blake