Figs by David Sutton

Author:David Sutton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Reaktion Books

7

All Around the World: The Modern History

Figs remained rare in the north, however. Although they were planted in some palaces and cloisters, often their fruit did not ripen properly. Figs are not mentioned at all in the general works of Thomas Tusser and Francis Bacon, and several of their contemporaries commented upon the difficulty of getting figs to ripen in England.

Henry Phillips, in his excellent book The Companion for the Orchard (1831), doubted the ability of figs to thrive in England in the past or the present, except in protected walled corners or in botanical gardens, where extraordinary results could sometimes be achieved:

At the Royal Gardens at Kew, there was a fig-house fifty feet in length, where, under the superintendence of Mr Aiton, this fruit has been forced to the highest pitch of perfection: Mr Aiton’s chief reliance has been, we understand on the second crop. In the year 1810, the royal tables were supplied with more than two hundred baskets of figs from that fig-house, fifty baskets of which were from the first crop, and one hundred and fifty baskets from the second. In one instance, Mr Aiton had this fruit ripe in January, and sent excellent figs to the palace on the late Queen Charlotte’s birth-day, the 18th of that month.

For Britain, northern France and all of northern Europe, transportation was the key to access to figs. For as long as transport was difficult, they remained a rare and luxurious product. When transport improved, or when a military alliance was formed with a fig-producing country, access became easier.

In southern Europe, figs were grown extensively in most Mediterranean countries at the time of the fall of the Roman Empire. The fig-growing zone was then extended by the Moorish conquests, into Spain and Portugal and across North Africa. Fig production in Spain and Portugal came to be even more important than in Italy and Greece. Figs grew well in southern France, and Thomas Jefferson, visiting Marseilles and Toulon in 1787, suggested that the French figs were the most delicately flavoured of all.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.