Breadfruit

“ Tinah then left me to enquire after the bedding, and I sent the offender on board, whom I punished with a severe flogging. I was glad to find this man was not of Oparre or Matavai.
The fine fruit called Avee was just coming into season: it was likewise in season at the time of our arrival in October. The breadfruit trees I have no doubt bear all the year round: we have seen a scarcity of breadfruit but have never been wholly without it. Some fern-root was shown to me which in scarce seasons is used by the natives as bread. It bears a long even-edged leaf about an inch wide ”

“ The breadfruit tree plants itself, as it springs from the roots of the old ones, so that the natives are often under the necessity of preventing its progress to make room for trees of other sorts to afford some variety in their food. ”

“ The bread-fruit tree is interesting, with its handsome feathery leaves, and its large, melon-shaped product. It grows to fifty feet in height, and bears fruit constantly for three quarters of the year, then takes a three months' rest. It is only equaled in the profuseness of its product by the banana, forming one of the staple sources of food supply to the lazy, indolent denizens of tropical regions. ”

“ There various kinds of the bread-fruit tree flourish in the greatest perfection; so likewise the banana and plantain and milk-giving cocoa-nut grow in profusion; yams, pumpkins, cucumbers, guavas, pine apples, shaddocks, oranges, lemons, the tomato, arrow root, the much cultivated taro and sugar cane, with numberless other fruits, vegetables, and nutritious roots, afford an abundant supply of food for man. How warm and genial is the atmosphere! the cold of winter is altogether unknown; storms may blow, but they are necessary to purify the air ”

“ In tropical regions, of course, almost every vegetable production is flourishing at that season, as well as the corn and the apple. Or, he has but to look on the surface of the earth on which he stands, and there are the potatoe, the turnip, the beet, and many other esculent roots; to say nothing of the squash, the pumpkin, the melon, the chestnut, the walnut, the beechnut, the butternut, the hazelnut, etc.,—most of which are nourishing, and more or less wholesome, and are in full view. ”

“ The bread-fruit grows on a tree that is about the size of a middling oak: its leaves are frequently a foot and a half long, of an oblong shape, deeply sinuated like those of the fig-tree, which they resemble in consistence and colour, and in the exuding of a white milky juice upon being broken. ”

“ Their juices are at once appetizing, nutritious, and wholesome. Millions of people have subsisted upon them largely, from time out of mind.
It is, therefore, not a matter of wonder that our forefathers, when they came to the shores of this New World, brought with them seeds, cuttings, and plants of the best fruits they had at their old homes. Thus it was that the apple, pear, peach, plum, cherry, grape, olive, date, almond, European walnut and chestnut, and many other less valuable fruits were first cultivated in North America. ”

“ But, in such seasons as it has occurred to any one to go in for more extensive gardening, we rejoice in a profusion of carrots, turnips, parsnips, onions, taro, beet-root, and sundry other things.
Fruit can hardly be looked on as a food; it is merely an ornamental accessory to it, in our opinion. We are great fruit-consumers, but we look on such trifles as only refreshers for odd moments, and not as having anything to do with the serious business of eating. ”

“ In the fruit market were many familiar bright-coloured fruits. Fat, jet-black negresses, wearing turbans on their heads, strings of coloured beads on their necks and arms, and single long white garments, which appeared to be continually slipping off their shoulders, presided over glittering piles of oranges, bananas, pine-apples, passion-fruit, tomatoes, apples, pears, capsicum and peppers, sugar-canes, cabbage-palms, cherimoyas, and bread-fruit. ”

“ The bread-fruit, when perfectly ripe, is pulpy, sweetish, putrescent, and in this state is thought to be too laxative; but when green it is farinaceous, and esteemed a very wholesome food, either baked under the coals, or roasted over them. ”

“ This fruit is nearly of an oval shape, about a foot long, and eight inches thick. The whole is eatable, except a very thin rind, with which it is covered, and a small portion at the centre, where the cells terminate. These contain no seeds, but are full of a very nutritious pulp, easy of digestion, sufficiently agreeable to the taste, and which we always ate with fresh pleasure. During eight months of the year this tree produces its fruits, which, ripening one after another, thus afford the natives an abundance of wholesome food. ”

“ The other chief vegetal products are wheat, barley, maize, millet, the bean, yam, sweet and common potato, tomato, eggplant, ginseng, cabbage, bamboo, indigo, pepper, tobacco, camphor, tallow, ground-nut, poppy, water-melon, sugar, cotton, hemp, and silk. Among the fruits grown are the date, mulberry, orange, lemon, pumelo, persimmon, lichi, pomegranate, pineapple, fig, coconut, mango, and banana, besides the usual kinds common in Western countries. ”

“ The imaginary plum-pudding tree naturally suggests the bread-fruit of the islands of the Pacific, that wonderful plant that bears a crop of penny rolls. The bread-fruit is a beautiful as well as a useful tree. Its trunk rises to a height of about forty feet, and when full grown is from a foot to fifteen inches in diameter. ”

“ The fruits now thriving are the grape, fig, peach, almond, apple, pear, strawberry, sloe, plum, several varieties; olive, the common and white mulberry, pine apple, plantain, sugar cane, Cape gooseberry besides these, there are several others that will ripen here, which, in colder countries, never come to perfection ”

“ Other fruits largely employed for food are plantains, bananas, bread-fruit, dates, cocoanuts, chestnuts, mangoes, mangostines, and papaws. Among roots, tubers, and bulbs, stored with edible materials, may be mentioned beets, carrots, radishes, turnips, swedes, ginger, potatoes, yam, cassava, onions, and Jerusalem artichokes. But if we look at the other vegetables used as food, we shall observe at once that they are few in number, and unimportant in economical value. ”

“ All the cereals we grow in this country, Indian corn in many varieties, the grape, every description of European fruit—in some cases, as in that of the apple, greatly improved by its transference to America—tobacco, rice, the sweet potato, the sugar-cane, the orange, the banana, ending with the cocoa-nut of the South of Florida. ”

“ The usual kinds of fruit the regular costers deal in are strawberries, raspberries (plain and stalked) , cherries, apricots, plums, green-gages, currants, apples, pears, damsons, green and ripe gooseberries, and pine-apples. They also deal in vegetables, such as turnips, greens, brocoli, carrots, onions, celery, rhubarb, new potatoes, peas, beans (French and scarlet, broad and Windsor) , asparagus, vegetable marrow, seakale, spinach, lettuces, small salads, radishes, etc. Their fruit and vegetables they usually buy at Covent-garden, Spitalfields, or the Borough markets. ”

“ Fruits should be watery and lower in sugar. Some examples of poor fruit choices would be pineapple, ripe mango, bananas, dates, raisins, figs. Fruits should not be combined with vegetables.
Vegetables should not be starchy, packed-full of energy. Poor vegetable choices would be potato, parsnip, turnip, corn, sweet potato, yam, beet, winter squash. Sprouts and baby greens are vegetables and may be included in salads. ”

“ But when the fruit is allowed to become ripe, which is not when it first turns red, but when the seeds have become dark brown and the berries assume a mahogany color, then will its true richness and flavor be developed, and the fruit be found to possess that commingling of sweet and sour which is sprightly, refreshing and agreeable. For those whose taste demands a greater degree of sweetness, sugar may be added without destroying the flavor, but they will be few who will require much addition of saccharine beyond that which the perfectly ripened berry yields. ”

“ The best are made from hard-skinned fruits, whose whole pulp is liquified by piercing the rind before the fruit is fully ripe, and closing the orifice with a wax-like substance, almost exactly according to a practice common in different parts of Asia. The drinks are made, of course, at home. The farinaceous fruits are sold to the confectioners, who take also a portion of the milk and all the meat supplied by the pastures. Many choice fruits grow on shrubs, ranging from the size of a large black currant tree to that of the smallest gooseberry bush. ”

“ It is hard to realize how scarce this fruit was sixty or seventy years ago, but the prediction of the sagacious physician has been verified even beyond his imagination. Strawberries are raised almost as abundantly as potatoes, and for a month or more can be eaten as a cheap and wholesome food by all classes, even the poorest. By a proper selection of varieties we, in our home, feast upon them six weeks together, and so might the majority of those whose happy lot is cast in the country. ”

“ The fruit can be used both as a vegetable and as a fruit, the former in its green state, when it is boiled and served with melted butter, resembles a vegetable marrow or squash, but is superior to either of these vegetables. As a fruit it is either used by itself, or in conjunction with other fruits it forms the basis of a fruit salad. It is largely used in the North, and its cultivation is steadily spreading South, as its valuable properties are becoming better known. ”

“ The Bread-fruit, although the most delicate and nourishing food upon earth, is, with people like them, liable to inconveniencies; for in such a group or Archipelago of islands, whose inhabitants are in such various gradations of refinement, from the gentle and polished Otaheitean, to the savage and cannibal Feegee, a war amongst them is often attended with devastation as well as famine. ”

“ Fruit is necessary in our diet, and is not an extravagance unless we buy fancy varieties brought from a distance, or native fruits out of season.
Composition and nutritive value.—The chief foodstuffs in fruits are carbohydrates and mineral matter. Fresh fruit contains from 75 to 95 per cent of water, and its presence is apparent in such juicy fruits as the melon and the orange. Figure 25 shows that seemingly dry fruits like the banana and the apple also contain much water. Even fruits which have been artificially dried, like prunes and raisins, contain90 some water. ”

“ As for the cereals and vegetables, all kinds of them grow here perfectly and abundantly. Wheat, maize, barley, lucerne, are the principal rural products. The chick-pea, the French bean, the gray pea, the bean, the sugar-pea, the hastings, the lentils, the potatoes, the Spanish potatoes, the carrot, the radishes, the turnips, the pumpkins, the beet root, etc., and all kinds of pot herbs, the watermelons, the melon and the strawberry grow also abundantly. ”

“ The cereals, durah, maize, rice, sugar cane, starch-yielding roots and tubers, cotton, coffee, tobacco, spices, gums and caoutchouc, dye-stuffs and medicinal plants, the banana, fig, date, orange, and the vine are among the known products of this region; and all are capable of becoming important staples of foreign commerce. ”

“ NOBODY wants a boiled or fried orange or grapefruit for breakfast. Other fruits, such as apples, pears, peaches, plums, cherries, grapes, and diverse berries are often cooked, in many ways; but when ripe, sound and of good stock, they usually "taste" better raw than cooked. We do not boil our melons, nuts, or radishes, nor, as a rule, our celery and green-salad leaves of various kinds, or our cucumbers. ”

“ But fruit also literal: for what joy of vegetation is lacking to the man who every month in the year can look through his study-window on a green lawn, and have strawberries and cream for his breakfast,—who can sit down to this royal fruit, and at the same time to apricots, peaches, nectarines, blackberries, raspberries, melons, figs both yellow and purple, early apples, and grapes of three kinds? ”

“ There is NEITHER SEED NOR STONE in the inside, but all is of a pure substance, like bread. It must be eaten new; for, if it is kept above twenty-four hours, it grows harsh and choaky; but it is very pleasant before it is too stale. This fruit lasts in season EIGHT MONTHS in the year, during which the natives eat NO OTHER SORT OF FOOD OF BREAD KIND. I did never see of this fruit anywhere but here. ”

“ Even fruits have been found ready cut and prepared for consumption, the apple being the most plentiful of these fruits. Seeds of different fruits, such as the plum, the raspberry, and the blackberry, have been found, together with the shells of hazel and beech-nuts, showing that all these different fruits were used for food in the olden times now so long passed away. ”

“ A Pudding of Fruit and Bread Crumbs.—Mix a pint of dried and pounded bread-crumbs with an equal quantity of any kind of berries, or of dried and chopped sour apples. Add three eggs, half a pint of milk, three spoonfuls of fine flour, and half a tea-spoonful of salt. Bake on a griddle or in an oven in muffin-rings, or, when made thinner, as griddle-cakes. If dried fruit is used, more milk is needed than for fresh berries. ”

“ We will suppose that in every recipe we are about to give the fruit is at any rate fresh; we do not say ripe, because there are many instances in which fruit not ripe enough to be eaten raw is exceedingly wholesome when stewed properly and sweetened. As an instance we may mention green gooseberries and hard greengages, which, though quite uneatable in their natural state, yet make delicious fruit pies or dishes of stewed fruit. ”