Toby Sonneman - Lemon: A Global History

If I were forced to give up every fruit in the world
but one I would have absolutely no trouble choosing.
The lemon wins, hands down.

Laurie Colwin, More Home Cooking

A decade ago, I would have been mystified by the quotation above. I love fruit raspberries, peaches, pears, plums, apricots, apples, mangoes and more but I would never have chosen lemon as my favourite.

Then, in an effort to discover what foods triggered my disabling migraines, I tried eliminating many common foods, including citrus, from my diet. I was shocked to discover the one food I missed most of all: lemon. Without realizing it, Id been squeezing lemon juice on salads, fish and vegetables, and adding zest to baked goods. On my lemon-deficient diet, everything tasted a little blander, lacking that lively acid note.

I was so relieved to discover I had no adverse reaction to lemons that I wanted to run to the grocery store and buy bags of them, fill every bowl in my house with them, make fresh lemonade and lemon meringue pie, walk through lemon orchards and learn all I could about lemons. Living withoutlemons, even for a short time, had given me a blossoming new appreciation. I would never take them for granted again.

Lemons, which originated in India, now grow in subtropical areas around the world.

As I examined the lemons history, I discovered I had more than a passing acquaintance with its ancestor, the citron, an essential symbol of the Jewish autumn harvest festival. This fruit was so important to my ancestors that when my grandmother emigrated from Russia to America in 1913, she brought a special oval silver container used only during the seven-day festival to keep the citron fresh. After the holiday she made preserves from citron peel to give to new mothers, including my own mother, in the folk belief that it would restore their strength.

Besides drawing from my family history and the many books I read, I also absorbed the lemons story from places and people. In Sicilys Lemon Riviera I rode the little blue Zappal & Torrisi bus between coastal villages, winding alonga road bordered with lemon groves. I spent days at a working lemon orchard agriturismo and visited Sicilian cooking authority Eleonora Consoli, who generously shared her insights into the islands cuisine, history and love of lemons. A gust of citrus blossom perfume presses us to stop, to discover a small corner of paradise, she had written in a cookbook on citrus. On the island where lemon trees reign, this corner is never far away.

Far to the north of Italy, at the foot of the Alps, I visited restored lemon greenhouses from the seventeenth century and realized how miraculous fresh lemons must once have seemed to residents of northern countries. Southern Italys Amalfi Coast is famous for lemons, but it wasnt until Id climbed a spiral of stone steps around a steep hillside layered with lemon orchards, high above the Mediterranean, that I sensed the wonder of them. Ancient stone walls enclosed tinygarden orchards perched on narrow terraces, each a tapestry of trellises, intertwined branches, leaves and large moon-yellow lemons, their fragrance infusing the air. Never had I experienced a landscape so exquisitely shaped by human hands, so ancient yet so alive.

Golden Meyer and Pink Variegated lemons together with the more common lemon (Eureka or Lisbon).

Nearer to home for me, Californias lemon orchards were no less marvellous. In a dozen journeys to Southern California, in tours of orchards, packing plants, processing facilities and a most memorable journey through the Citrus Variety Collection with Professor Emeritus W. P. Bitters, I absorbed all I could about the fascinating lemon.

For years now Ive always had a bowl of lemons in my kitchen, and simply smelling the aromatic oils of lemon rind, I recall the happiness of walking through a Southern California orchard on a December day, embraced by the exhilarating fragrance of lemon trees, blossoms and fruit. The lemons refreshing, restorative quality draws me back, time and again as it has for people across the globe for centuries. Today, if I had to give up every fruit in the world but one, I would not hesitate to choose the lemon.

1
Origins and Obsessions