Choice Cuts

by Mark Kurlansky

  ROARING LION ON “BANANAS”

  Though Calypsonians usually come from poor families and spend their entire lives impoverished, they are the most famous stars in their small island nation of Trinidad, eclipsing even sports figures. Calypso is a Trinidadian music form with both African and European roots. A Calypsonian is a writer and performer and always writes and sings his own songs, debuting them at the annual lenten carnival. Roaring Lion, who was born Rafael de Leon in 1909, was one of the pioneers in taking Calypso outside of Trinidad, which is why his Calypsos are among the best known internationally, especially “Ugly Woman (Never make a pretty woman your wife)” and “Mary Ann (Down by the sea side she sifting sand).” A good Calypso should have double and triple meanings, sexual, political, and social implications. A simple song about bananas is never simply about bananas.

  —M.K.

  Bananas

  I know a little dame she’s beautiful and named Rosy

  She’s charming, very attractive and lovely

  She is fussy and wouldn’t eat a potato

  No cauliflowers, no macaroni, or beans and tomatoes

  (Chorus A)

  But she fancies banana, just give me banana

  Those lovely bananas

  That’s the food for me

  Now Rosy, she never partakes of mussels

  She hates winkles and strongly objects to cockles

  She thinks kippers awful, and oughtn’t to be tolerated

  Fish and chips dreadful, highly tasteless and over-rated

  (Chorus B)

  But she says bananas

  I love bananas

  Big ripe bananas

  That’s the food for me

  Now Rosy, never indulges in drinking

  She talks very little, but does a great deal of thinking

  She hates champagne, and a dry martini and ginger

  As well as a whiskey, creme de menthe and brandy and soda

  (Repeat Chorus B)

  —c. 1936

  ANTHIMUS ON APPLES

  Sweet apples that have been properly ripened on the tree are good, but those that are sour are not suitable. For healthy and sick people sweet apples are good, as well as pears well ripened on the tree, for hard and sour fruit is extremely harmful.

  —from On the Observance of Foods, sixth century A.D.,

  translated from the Latin by Mark Grant

  ALEXANDRE DUMAS PÈRE ON APPLES

  Apples are eaten raw or stewed, in jams and marmelades. An agreeable cider, which is of good quality and keeps well, is also made from them. Sour apples, mixed with about a third of sweet apples, are mainly used for this.

  The French provinces which are the most abundant in apples are Normandy, Auvergne and the Vexin français. Brittany also supplies a fairly considerable quantity.

  The best apples to be eaten in winter are the reinettes, the court-pendu, the pomme d’api and the calville. There are three varieties of calville: the white, the red and the yellow. The red calville is the best of the three, this being the one which has red skin and flesh which is partly reddish. It contains a sweet juice and suits those who have acidity of the stomach, always assuming that only a few are eaten. Reinettes are particularly suitable for the bilious. But of all the apples the court-pendu is the best; its flavour is very agreeable, its flesh delicate and its aroma very sweet.

  The pomme d’api, which is always eaten raw, is the smallest and the hardest of all the apples. It contains a juice which is full of flavour and very suitable for refreshing the mouth and quenching thirst; but its flesh is heavy and difficult to digest.

  Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, one of the most famous of the sons of Normandy, gives in the following ingenious bit of fiction an account of the origin of apple trees in his province:

  ‘The beautiful Thetis,’ says he, ‘having seen Venus carry off from under her very eyes the apple which was the prize for beauty, without herself being allowed to take part in the competition, resolved to seek revenge. So, one day when Venus had descended to part of the coast belonging to the Gauls and was searching there for pearls with which to adorn herself, and shellfish for her son, a Triton robbed her of her apple, which she had left on a rock. He then took it to the goddess of the sea; and Thetis immediately sowed its seeds throughout the neighbouring countryside to immortalize the memory of her revenge and of her triumph. This, say the Celtic Gauls, is the reason for the very large number of apple trees which grow in our land, and for the particular beauty of our girls.’

  To avoid the expense incurred in weddings, Solon ordered the newly married to eat only one apple before going to bed on the first night of the marriage. This was hardly very substantial or very cheering for the poor newly-weds.

  Pommes au beurre • Apples cooked with butter

  With a corer remove the cores of about twenty beautiful apples. Peel nine or ten of these, as you would for making a compote, simmer them in lightly sugared water until they are three quarters cooked, and drain them. Cook the remaining apples in a casserole with a little butter, cinnamon and a glass of water until they have melted into a purée. Spread a part of this marmelade on a platter with a little apricot compote. Arrange the whole apples on this, fill the hole in the middle of each with butter and garnish the spaces in between the apples with the rest of the marmelade. Glaze with powdered sugar, and cook in the oven until they have turned a good colour. Plug the holes in the apples with cherries, or jam, and serve hot.

  Charlottes de pommes • Apple charlotte

  Peel and quarter about twenty beautiful French reinette apples. Remove the cores, and put the apple slices in a casserole with a little butter, cinnamon, lemon and a glass of water. Put a lid on the casserole, put it on a gentle fire and let the apples cook without stirring them. Let them stick very gently to the pan, to give them a slightly grilled taste. Add some sugar and some first-class butter. Let all this reduce, and keep stirring, until the marmelade thickens; then remove the cinnamon and the lemon. Cut some slices of soft bread, about the width of two fingers. Arrange these on the bottom and around the sides of a mould; in the middle of the mould put the apple marmelade, having mixed it with some apricot marmelade in order to make the dish more refined. Then, when the mould is filled, cover it with slices of bread and cook for about twenty minutes in an oven or on glowing coals. Let the charlotte take colour, turn the mould out on to a platter and serve. Don’t forget to use clarified butter for buttering your bread.

  —from Le Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine, 1873,

  translated from the French by Alan and Jane Davidson

  APICIUS ON PRESERVING FRUIT

  To Preserve Fresh Figs, Apples,

  Plums, Pears and Cherries

  Select them all very carefully with the stems on and place them in honey so they do not touch each other.

  —first century A.D.,

  translated from the Latin by Joseph Dommers Vehling

  PLATINA ON FIGS

  The fig alone, of all trees, does not bear flowers but produces its fruit from its milk. It has several varieties. The white fig is from trees of good omen, but the black from those of bad omen. The trees of good omen are considered to be the oak, the Italian oak, the holm-oak, the cork-oak, the beech, the hazel, the service-tree, the pear, the apple, the grape, the plum, the cornel cherry, and the lotus.

  Some figs are called Chian from a place, taking the name from a city in Syria. I think the African fig is so-called from that province. The anxious Cato brought its fruit into the Senate when he was seeking a third Punic War and badgering the senators, especially those who did not think it at all the stuff of Roman virtue that Carthage be destroyed. As soon as he said, “How long do you think this fruit has been picked from its own tree? Since all agree that it is fresh, know that it was picked not three days ago at Carthage, so close is our enemy,” at once the Third Punic War was launched, by which Carthage, once the rival of the Roman Empire, was destroyed. There are also names taken from discoverers, such as Livian, Calpurnian, P
ompeian. There are also late-ripening figs, early-ripening figs, two-crop figs, and tough-skinned figs, which ripen either slowly or quite fast, because they produce figs twice a year and because they are enveloped in a tough skin. There are Numidian and Mariscan and Carian figs too. According to Macrobius, figs which do not ripen at all are called grossuli, for Albinus, speaking about Brutus, said, “He eats grossuli with honey like a fool.”

  Fresh figs, especially ripe ones, do not do much harm, since they incline toward warmth and moisture, although all fruits generate bad humors. Dry figs affect the epileptic, soothe the lungs, chest and throat exacerbated by catarrh, open obstructions of liver and spleen, cast gross humors out of the kidneys and bladder, and drive bad blood out to the skin. Frequent use generates lice, though. Early-ripening figs abound in dangerous moisture and for this reason cannot be dried, while two-crop figs, the type of which Augustus was exceptionally fond, produce this fruit, as it were, from the dregs of their own nature. Pompey the Great, after he had conquered Mithridates, found a recipe in Mithridates’ writing desk written in his own hand in which he maintained that he was safe and secure against all poisonings for the whole day if he took one walnut, two dried figs (the most potent antidote), twenty leaves of rue and a grain of salt, all ground together and eaten on an empty stomach. There is also a goat-fig of a wild kind which never ripens. Fresh figs, though, will last a long time if they are picked with stems as long and unbruised as possible and put in honey.

  —from On Right Pleasure and Good Health, 1465,

  translated from the Latin by Mary Ella Milham

  HENRY DAVID THOREAU ON EUROPEAN CRANBERRIES

  August 23, 1854. Vaccinium oxycoccus has a small, now purplish-dotted fruit, flat on the sphagnum, some turned partly scarlet, on terminal peduncles, with slender thread-like stems, and small leaves, strongly resolute on the edges—of which Emerson says, the “Common cranberry of the north of Europe,” cranberry of commerce there.

  October 17, 1859. These interesting little cranberries are quite scarce, the vine bearing (this year at least) only amid the higher and drier sphagnum mountains amid the lowest bushes about the edge of the open swamp. There the dark red berries (quite ripe, only a few spotted still) now rest on the shelves and in the recesses of the red sphagnum. There is only enough of these berries for sauce to a botanist’s Thanksgiving dinner.

  I have come out this afternoon a-cranberrying, chiefly to gather some of the small cranberry, Vaccinium oxycoccus. This was a small object, yet not to be postponed, on account of imminent frosts—that is, if I would know this year the flavor of the European cranberry as compared with our larger kind. I thought I should like to have a dish of this sauce on the table at Thanksgiving of my own gathering. I could hardly make up my mind to come this way, it seemed so poor an object to spend the afternoon on. I kept foreseeing a lame conclusion—how I should cross the Great Fields, look into Beck Stow’s Swamp, and then retrace my steps no richer than before. In fact, I expected little of this walk, yet it did pass through the side of my mind that somehow, on this very account (my small expectation), it would turn out well, as also the advantage of having some purpose, however small, to be accomplished—of letting your deliberate wisdom and foresight in the house to some extent direct and control your steps. If you would really take a position outside the street and daily life of men, you must have deliberately planned your course, you must have business which is not your neighbors’ business, which they cannot understand. For only absorbing employment prevails, succeeds, takes up space, occupies territory, determines the future of individuals and states, drives Kansas out of your head, and actually and permanently occupies the only desirable and free Kansas against all border ruffians. The attitude of resistance is one of weakness, inasmuch as it only faces an enemy; it has its back to all that is truly attractive. You shall have your affairs, I will have mine. You will spend this afternoon in setting up your neighbor’s stove, and be paid for it; I will spend it in gathering the few berries of the Vaccinium oxycoccus which Nature produces here, before it is too late, and be paid for it also, after another fashion. I have always reaped unexpected and incalculable advantages from carrying out at last, however tardily, any little enterprise which my genius suggested to me long ago as a thing to be done, some step to be taken, however slight, out of the usual course.

  How many schools I have thought of which I might go to but did not go to! expecting foolishly that some greater advantage (or schooling) would come to me! It is these comparatively cheap and private expeditions that substantiate our existence and batten our lives—as, where a vine touches the earth in its undulating course, it puts forth roots and thickens its stock. Our employment generally is tinkering, mending the old worn-out teapot of society. Our stock in trade is solder. Better for me, says my genius, to go cranberrying this afternoon for the Vaccinium oxycoccus in Gowing’s Swamp, to get but a pocketful and learn its peculiar flavor—aye, and the flavor of Gowing’s Swamp and of life in New England—than to go consul to Liverpool and get I don’t know how many thousand dollars for it, with no such flavor. Many of our days should be spent, not in vain expectations and lying on our oars, but in carrying out deliberately and faithfully the hundred little purposes which every man’s genius must have suggested to him. Let not your life be wholly without an object, though it be only to ascertain the flavor of a cranberry, for it will not be only the quality of an insignificant berry that you will have tasted, but the flavor of your life to that extent, and it will be such a sauce as no wealth can buy.

  Both a conscious and an unconscious life are good; neither is good exclusively, for both have the same source. The wisely conscious life springs out of an unconscious suggestion. I have found my account in travelling in having prepared beforehand a list of questions which I would get answered, not trusting to my interest at the moment, and can then travel with the most profit. Indeed, it is by obeying the suggestions of a higher light within you that you escape from yourself and, in the transit, as it were see with the unworn sides of your eye, travel totally new paths. What is that pretended life that does not take up a claim, that does not occupy ground, that cannot build a causeway to its objects? that sits on a bank looking over a bog, singing its desires?

  However, it was not with such blasting expectations as these that I entered the swamp. I saw bags of cranberries, just gathered and tied up, on the banks of Beck Stow’s Swamp. They must have been raked out of the water, now so high, before they should rot. I left my shoes and stockings on the bank far off and waded barelegged through rigid andromeda and other bushes a long way, to the soft open sphagnous center of the swamp.

  I found these cunning little cranberries lying high and dry on the firm uneven tops of the sphagnum—their weak vine considerably on one side—sparsely scattered about the drier edges of the swamp, or sometimes more thickly occupying some little valley a foot or two over, between two mountains of sphagnum. They were of two varieties, judging from the fruit. The one, apparently the ripest, colored most like the common cranberry but more scarlet—that is, yellowish-green, blotched, or checked with dark scarlet-red, commonly pear-shaped. The other, also pear-shaped, or more bulged out in the middle, thickly and finely dark-spotted or peppered on yellowish-green or straw-colored or pearly ground—almost exactly like the Smilacina and Convallaria berries now, except that they are a little larger and not so spherical, with a tinge of purple. A singular difference. They both lay very snug in the moss, often the whole of the long (one and a half inch or more) peduncle buried, their vines very inobvious, projecting only one to three inches, so that it was not easy to tell what vine they belonged to, and you were obliged to open the moss carefully with your fingers to ascertain it; while the common large cranberry there, with its stiff, erect vine, was commonly lifted above the sphagnum. The grayish-speckled variety was particularly novel and pretty, though not easy to detect. It lay here and there snugly sunk in the sphagnum, whose drier parts it exactly resembled in color, just like some ki
nd of swamp-sparrow’s eggs in their nest. I was obliged with my finger carefully to trace the slender pedicel through the moss to its vine, where I would pluck the whole together, like jewels worn on or set in these sphagnous breasts of the swamp—swamp pearls, call them—one or two to a vine and, on an average three-eighths of an inch in diameter. They are so remote from their vines, on their long thread-like peduncles, that they remind you the more forcibly of eggs, and in May I might mistake them for such. These plants are almost parasitic, resting wholly on the sphagnum, in water instead of air. The sphagnum is a living soil for it. It rests on and amid this, on an acre of sponges. They are evidently earlier than the common. A few are quite soft and red-purple. I waded quite round the swamp for an hour, my bare feet in the cold water beneath, and it was a relief to place them on the warmer surface of the sphagnum. I filled one pocket with each variety, but sometimes, being confused, crossed hands and put them into the wrong pocket.

  I enjoyed this cranberrying very much, notwithstanding the wet and cold, and the swamp seemed to be yielding its crop to me alone, for there are none else to pluck it or to value it. I told the proprietor once that they grew here, but he, learning that they were not abundant enough to be gathered for the market, has probably never thought of them since. I am the only person in the township who regards them or knows of them, and I do not regard them in the light of their pecuniary value. I have no doubt I felt richer wading there with my two pockets full, treading on wonders at every step, than any farmer going to market with a hundred bushels which he has raked, or hired to be raked. I got further and further away from the town every moment, and my good genius seemed to have smiled on me, leading me hither, and then the sun suddenly came out clear and bright, but it did not warm my feet. I would gladly share my gains, take one or twenty into partnership and get this swamp with them, but I do not know an individual whom this berry cheers and nourishes as it does me. When I exhibit it to them I perceive that they take but a momentary interest in it and commonly dismiss it from their thoughts with the consideration that it cannot be profitably cultivated. You could not get a pint at one haul of a rake, and Slocum would not give you much for them. But I love it the better partly for that reason even. I fill a basket with them and keep it several days by my side. If anybody else—any farmer, at least—should spend an hour thus wading about here in this secluded swamp, bare-legged, intent on the sphagnum, filling his pocket only, with no rake in his hand and no bag or bushel on the bank, he would be pronounced insane and have a guardian put over him; but if he’ll spend his time skimming and watering his milk and selling his small potatoes for large ones, or generally in skinning flints, he will probably be made guardian of somebody else. I have not garnered any rye or oats, but I gathered the wild vine of the Assabet.