You often hear in history how fruits such as pineapples and bananas (seen as an exotic foreign produce in places such as Britain) were transported back to the country for people, often wealthy or influential, to try. How did such fruits last the months long voyages from colonies back to the empire’s capital without modern day refrigeration/freezing?
In: 7801
It depends. Very often, they simply did not.
There is a legend that Queen Victoria offered a bounty of 100 pounds sterling to anyone who could bring her a fresh mangosteen. They don’t keep long.
In most cases, fruit itself was not brought back to Europe. What was brought back were plants, seeds or cuttings which they tried to plant on European soil. An interesting example is peaches, which are native to China. They were first introduced to Europe in Ancient Greece, via land trade. But they were in turn introduced to North America by colonists, supposedly by George Minifie who brought the seeds and planted them on his estate.
In the case of pineapple, it was a little easier because the journey from the Americas (John Adams sailed to France in six weeks in 1777) is significantly shorter than the voyage from Asia. Columbus supposedly managed to bring one back to Spain. But even then, most of the fruit would rot on the journey, and what were sold were the ones that did not. This made an unspoiled pineapple incredibly expensive. Rich people would buy one, display it at parties, and never eat it until it rotted. But by the 1700s greenhouse technology allowed tropical fruit to be cultivated in Europe though still at considerable expense.
Latest Answers