The reputation of Lord Auckland, Governor-General of India from 1836-1842, was destroyed by the First Afghan War. In his book, Return of a King, William Dalrymple has recently retold the story of this first really cataclysmic defeat for the British in their empire expanding years, and as the man in charge, Auckland has taken much of the blame. Which is a pity since Auckland otherwise had much to his credit. He seems to have been a nice man, modest, a bit shy, well-mannered and well-intentioned towards India, and hard working. He was possibly the only ever unmarried ruler of India, but his two lively sisters Emily and Fanny Eden filled the family role and left a vivid picture of their life in India in their many letters. And this might also be said to Auckland’s credit – he may have popularised the growing of strawberries in India.
In her memoirs, An Englishwoman in India, 1828-1858, Harriet Tytler recalls being taken as a child to see what she was told were the first strawberry plants in India. They were grown by a manservant of Lord Auckland and had two ripe red berries.
“No one touched them, but all expressed the desire to be Lord Auckland [and so] to have the pleasure of eating the first Indian strawberries.” But Tytler, who would later be the only British woman in Delhi during the siege of Delhi in 1857, leaving valuable eye-witness accounts, was made of sterner stuff: “No sooner had my father and his friends gone on, chatting away, then I thought I must really taste the strawberries.
Accordingly, I picked and ate them both.” History does not record what Lord Auckland did when he found out about the loss of his strawberries. But Tytler was not correct about them being the first. She must have had them in Shimla (Emily Eden recalls them as well) around 1836-38, but in 1827 the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India in Calcutta offered a prize to mallies who could grow the best strawberries (and other ‘English’ produce).
What does seem clear is that across India, as the British settled into imperial rule, from the Governor-General downwards, they were busy growing strawberries. No where more so than in Mahabaleshwar near Mumbai, which in 2010 got India’s 154th Geographical Indication status for its strawberries. Jamsetji Tata who had a house at Panchgani near Mahabaleshwar had taken a particular interest in these strawberries. His nephew, Sir Sorab Saklatvala, recalled how, despite his immersion in his mill businesses, he found time to consider “taking up the Panchgani plateau and where a jam factory could be built and strawberries grown on the slopes of the plateau.”
Nothing much seems to have come of this, but Tata would doubtless be happy that one of the companies bearing his name, Tata Tea, produces excellent strawberry jam from its tea estates in Munnar in Kerala.
The Times of India during the British Raj regularly carried reports on the Mahabaleshwar ‘Season’, when the British residents of Bombay went to the hill station to enjoy the cool air, social life, and strawberries – which, one report in 1877, said “were selling at the rate of forty dozens for a rupee!” The reports all talk of strawberry parties, where the focus wasn’t always the fruit.
One correspondent wrote in 1871 about a party given by two gentlemen from Poona who “report says they are both on matrimony intent – and I daresay thought a strawberry party as good a place as any for furthering their view.” Such ulterior motives aren’t surprising because there is something deeply sensual about strawberries.
When sold as they are in Mumbai, piled in pyramids of vivid, licentious red, heads down and pointed ends held temptingly high they are almost disturbing, piled alongside more placid fruits.
Strawberries push their appeal in your face – no time need be wasted in peeling and slicing, and unlike other berries which are small, round and tiresomely scant of flesh, strawberries are large and lusciously promising. And if they aren’t always that sweet, in some ways that enhances their appeal – the sickly sweetness of artificial strawberry flavouring, along with that equally artificial pink colour, can be kept for children, but the real, red, sweetsour-fragrant berries are adults only. Sex and strawberries are deeply linked, in ways that cross continents.
What the Old World knew as strawberries was an aromatic, intense tasting berry that grew across the temperate zone, including the hilly regions of India where they have been long been known as a wild fruit. But these berries were small and grew sparsely, and with succulent fruits like mangoes at our disposal, Indians mostly ignored them.
Europeans, with less choices, valued strawberries more, and when varieties that were even more red and strong tasting were found in North America, they took to planting them as well. But these were all still small, and the breakthrough only happened in 1714 when Amédée François Frézier, a French engineer who had been sent to map the coasts of South America, discovered a large, pale coloured strawberry in Chile (it is one of these happy coincidences that Frézier’s name is close to fraises, the French term for strawberries). He took some plants onboard, carefully tending them, even with his own daily water supply, over the many months it took to reach France.
Only five survived, but they were to be very important in the development of strawberries and the science of botany. Noel Kingsbury in Hybrid, his fascinating history of plant breeding, explains that scientists at that time did not know that plants have male and female sexes just like animals.
Most of the plants they knew contained male and female organs together, so the differences were overlooked, except in a few species like date palms which were dismissed as weird desert aberrations.
Strawberries can contain male and female organs on the same plant, but can also have separate male and female plants and, as it happens, since Frézier had chosen only ones with fruits, all he had were females. They could occasionally grow male organs, which allowed them to reproduce a little, but essentially they remained curiosities, grown in a few French botanical parks for the size of their berries, but not for their taste.
It was only around 1764 that Nicolas Duchesne, a French teenager fascinated by plants, realised that these South American giants could be cross-bred with their smaller North American cousins to produce the large, red, intense tasting fruit that we know as strawberries today.
Botanists like Duchesne went on to learn from strawberries all about sexual differences in plants, and how these could be manipulated to come up with even sexier tasting fruits. (The small older varieties are called wood strawberries, and are still grown and esteemed for taste, but they are only a small part of the market).
These American born, European mated berries were what the British were planting in India, and it is what Indians took to with such enthusiasm especially realised – the secret trick for appealing to Indian tastes – that strawberries are brilliant with dairy tastes. So not just strawberries and cream or strawberry ice-cream, but even better, the soft, intense fruity-sourness of strawberries matched with the hard, intense, milky-sweetness of kulfi, or the richness of basundhi, made from reduced milk, contrasted with the tanginess of strawberries, which is a cult favourite in Gujarat.
For me though that the Indian ingredient that is brilliant with strawberries is nothing milky, but the rather unexpected pungency of pepper. This will sound bizarre, but it is a combination that works because pepper, when it is really freshly ground, has a wonderful floral aroma that matches that of strawberry in ways you won’t believe until you try it.
It has to be really freshly ground pepper, and only a little, dusted over plain strawberries sprinkled with caster sugar, whose small crystals mingle with the fruit juices faster than regular sugar.
Combine all three, and take a deep whiff of the complex, fruity, floral, pungent taste, then crush the berries a bit, and taste their fruitiness, made slightly sweet with the sugar, and then pulsing with the warm heat of pepper (this would never work with the explosive heat of chillies).
It is a combination that sets your head, from tongue to throat to nasal passages tingling, and makes you so happy that the British brought these American paired fruit to India where this perfect pairing with pepper could take place.
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