From the initial discovery of a wild food through its cultivation to today I’ve got
more foods for you starting with the Apricot.
Cultivated for over 3000 years in China, the apricot was eaten raw or smoked and sold as
black smoked apricots.
During these times their seeds were also used to flavor dishes.
This would make you think they come from China but this isn’t so sure.
Their scientific name Prunus armeniaca suggests they come from Armenia where it is thought
that Alexander the Great brought apricots from Armenia to Greece.
Writings from these times don’t confirm this though.
Other research suggests that the apricot came from Kabul, Afghanistan.
It seems there may have been 5 different types during this time with one of them falling
apart if even touched with the most delicate pressure.
The wild native to the common apricot, Armeniaca vulgaris was yellow with an acidic taste and
didn’t taste very good.
Despite their Armeniaca name the species probably originated from China, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan
and Kyrgyzstan but who knows it may have come from Afghanistan, not sure we’ll ever know.
To produce an apricot a hot summer, spring with no frost and a cool winter is needed
to produce fruit.
Genetically the apricot is between a plum and a peach.
For 1700 years apricots were considered to be an early peach but were eventually put
into their own fruit group.
10 varieties of apricots were cultivated by seed in India and as this fruit became more
popular it was cultivated from Japan and China all the way to northern Africa.
Cultivation moved it’s way up to southern Europe most notably Damascus where much bigger
farming practices took place.
During this time a fruit called mish mish found among the oases of Egypt was dried and
consumed for some time.
It wasn’t until later on they were identified to be wild apricots that came from seeds of
discarded apricots, so basically someone brought them there chucked the seeds on the ground
at the oasis and 10 years later people were calling them mish mish fruit.
As cultivation progressed different varieties were developed like the Siberian apricot which
is able to take much colder temperatures.
Cultivation brought on many new varieties and big demand for this fruit in hungry, rome
and italy.
They can be grafted onto a plum tree or peach tree rootstock or can be made into what is
called a fruit salad tree which has a different fruit on each branch as I have here.
This tree has nectarines, peaches, couple varieties of plums with the base of the tree
being the apricot.
Lettuce Next up we have lettuce.
Coming from the prickly lettuce or the Lactuca serriola L. the wild lettuce was a, as the
name suggests a prickly leafed vegetable, that was first cultivated in ancient Egypt
for the oil from its seeds.
The Egyptians selectively bred the spiny lettuce to improve their leaves starting in 2680 BCE.
Considered to be a sacred plant of reproduction god Min, the prickly leafed lettuce was placed
near images of him during festivals.
The prickly leafed lettuce has been immortalized in wall paintings, images in tombs and used
in religious ceremonies.
Once cultivated they measure 30 inches or 75 cm which is about the size of a large romaine
lettuce.
After developed by the Egyptians they were brought to the Greeks who brought them to
Rome.
Around 50 CE it was described by Roman agriculturist Columella that there were several varieties
of lettuce at this point.
During the reign of Domitian, the Romans ate their lettuce cooked with an olive oil and
vinegar dressing before the meal came which is where this tradition began.
Around 1100 lettuce started showing up in medieval writings primarily as a medicinal
herb.
Joachim Camerarius described in 1586 three of our modern lettuces today, loose leaf lettuce,
romaine lettuce and head lettuce.
First brought to the Americas by Christopher Columbus in the late 15th century.
In Holland between the 16th and 18th century many varieties were developed but lettuce
was never transported far from where it was grown due to its perishability.
It wasn’t until the early 20th century with the development of new shipping, packing and
storage techniques that lettuce was starting to be shipping much further than before.
Vacuum cooling a revolutionary development really changed the shipment of lettuce in
the 1950s.
Before vacuum cooling a method called ice-cooling was used in packing houses just outside the
lettuce fields.
Lettuce has come a long way with 100s of varieties that have been created which most are vastly
different than the original prickly lettuce a tough, bitter tasting spiny unpleasant lettuce.
Asian Pear A common fruit in China, Japan, Korea for
much time the asian pear’s popularity is spreading around the world.
Cultivated for over 3000 years much like the apricot, all asian pears experienced hybridization
and originated from 5 primitive genepools.
4 of these genepools come from asian species: P. betulaefolia, P. pashia, P. pyrifolia,
and P. ussuriensis with the 5th in question potentially being one of these but since I’m
already going to get roasted for my ability to pronounce scientific names we’ll skip
the callouts to all these varieties.
The true origin is unclear but they are believed to have come from the western and southwestern
mountainous areas of China.
Most cultivated pears native to asia come from P. ussuriensis, P. sinkiangensis and
P. pyrifolia.
These wild asian pears were only 1 cm or less than half an inch in diameter and grow on
large trees that are covered in them.
A whole bunch of selective cross breeding has led to what we have today as 3 common
asian pears or the pyrus pyrifolia.
The Chinese white pear, Chinese Sand pear and Japanese pear.
At this point you may have noticed not all asian pears look the same, the Chinese type
are shaped more like european pears where Japanese ones are more like apples and are
the predominant ones grown in the United States.
Of the Japanese are 2 main types Akanashi asian pears which are yellowish brown where
Aonashi type are more of a greenish yellow.
The most common Japanese varieties grown today are, all these varieties you see here on the
screen which I’m not going to read out, out of respect for the Japanese language.
The first Asian pear to land in the United States was a Chinese sand pear in New York
in 1820.
Asian pears continually came with Chinese and Japanese immigrants all the way through
the 1850s.
Oregon and California are the largest producers of asian pears in the US with a total of 5000
acres dedicated to growing them.
Today there are 100s of varieties grown that usually take 4 years to bear fruit after planting
and require a long cool period or chill requirement to start the growing process.
They offer up a crisp apple-like bite with sometimes a sour-tasting core.
Cashews The cashew, originating in north-eastern brazil
between the Atlantic rainforest and the Amazon rainforest, this area is almost desert-like
with its dry savannah woodland and thorn scrub terrain.
This is important as cashews will grow in the rainforest but won’t produce much fruit
at all unless they have distinct wet and dry seasons.
The cashew or scientifically Anacardium occidentale appears to have come from Anacardium excelsum
or the wild cashew.
More commonly known as espave this massive tree is as tall as a 7 story building, it
offers up an edible seed and inedible fruit that is S shaped and despite it being inedible..
It apparently tastes somewhat like strawberries.
This wild cashew was domesticated before the arrival of the Europeans.
The Portuguese brought the cashew to east Africa and the west coast of India in the
16th century only a short time after it’s discovery in 1578.
In India it was planted initially to reduce erosion as well as for the nut with development
of the cashew apple happening much later.
These trees thrived in India and became well established.
They were also brought up to Central America and the Caribbean islands.
The nuts were already domesticated before Europeans arrived in Brazil, the Native people
of South America had figured out that roasting the nuts in fire would remove the caustic
oil which would allow it be to eaten without becoming ill.
This technique wasn’t known outside of this area for some time though so only the apple
was used.
Once word got out the Europeans capitalized on this knowledge as well as the medicinal
effects of the juice, bark and the caustic seed oil.
India being the world’s hub for cashew production up until recently developed more refined methods
of removing the caustic shell oil which gave birth to the cashew nut industry.
A British butler developed a vacuum packing system which prolongs the shelf life of the
cashew.
Over the course of half a decade cashews have been domesticated to produce high yielding
varieties, significantly more than their wild counterparts.
Along with higher production Feni a popular juice made from the nut was also created.
Over a few years Vietnam has become the world’s leader in producing cashew nuts where Brazil
being 5th in the world is number 1 when it comes to cashew apples or the fruit that grows
around the nut.
I’ll cover this more in depth in another video but you can only harvest the cashew
apple or the nut but not both.
As of 2003 the cashew surpassed the almond as the number 1 nut crop in the world.
Lemon Thought to have originated from the central
Himalayan foothills the lemon is guessed to have come from a cross of two members of the
citrus family.
The best guess we have is that a cross of the bitter orange or Citrus aurantium and
the citron or the Citrus medica created the base for the lemon.
With archaeological evidence of seeds dating back 6000 years we know humans have been consuming
the lemon or ancient lemon for some time.
Whether the lemon came from the citron or a variation of the citron like the buddha’s
hand I’m not sure we’ll ever know.
It is said that the armies of Alexander the Great carried citron to the Mediterranean
region around 300 BCE.
Close to that time around 136 BCE a Jewish coin had the image of a citron on one side
of it.
Chinese writings from 300 CE speak of bushels of Chinese citrons given as gifts to the Roman
Empire.
The fruit was imported into Greece and Iran were it was cultivated and became a staple
food in Roman by 300 CE.
From there the citron was brought to Italy where it grew and survived in Sardinia and
Sicily.
By 1003 the citron was grown and presented as a token of gratitude to Norman lords.
This area became the hub of production which supplied Germany, France and Italy.
The Spaniards brought them across the ocean where they would have possibly survived in
greenhouses in Florida and cultivated production in 1620 in Peurto Rico.
Commercial operations of the fruit began in California in 1880 but after a couple of rough
winters all the trees died off.
As citron was being spread about the world other varieties were created with one being
the lemon.
Around the same time the citron was being brought over to the Americas so did the lemon
aboard once again Christopher Columbus’s ship in 1493.
A couple hundred years later in 1747, James Lind started experimenting with adding lemon
juice to sailor’s diets who were suffering from scurvy.
Vitamin C was still undiscovered but he stumbled onto a simple solution to a common problem.
Today wild citron trees are still found in northern India.
This originating fruit is still used in places like Morocco to create preserves or jams.