What Remains of the Flavors of the Eighteenth Century?

Mine is a culinary and an agricultural inquiry. I approach the question avoiding the narrowest way of construing what remains of the flavors of the eighteenth century? I can imagine a foodie magazine (Lucky Peach before its demise) commissioning an epicurean writer to secure fruit from the oldest bearing fruit trees in the world—from the Zenji-Muro Persimmon Tree at Ozengi Temple in Japan; the Pizzaro Fig planted at the Governor's Palace in Lima in 1540; the Breadfruit Tree at Galle, Sri Lanka; the Muso di Bui Apple growing in a seventeenth-century homestead outside of Foligno, Italy; the John Endicott Pear Tree in Danvers, Massachusetts planted in the 1640s; the Olive Tree of Vouves in Chania, Greece, reckoned to be well over two millennia old; or, one of the dozen James I Mulberries still living in Britain (planted to promote the silk trade though it was later discovered silk worms did not savor the leaves of the Persian Black mulberries that the king promoted).¹ But I am aware this approach only invites precisionist objections: "Oh, the water of the 1640s contained less cadmium and so would have tasted different than that of 2016," or "Because accidentals of weather produce different epigenetic responses season by season, giving rise to greatly different tastes each year in crops, it is nonsense to speak of an enduring same flavor in even the same plant in the same place." I wish humans could taste cadmium, since it is toxic, and they, therefore, could detect and avoid it.

There is, however, a set of questions about tasting and taste explored by Denise Gigante in her Taste: A Literary History that I think has traction in the inquiry we're about to make.² Our reception, our basic understanding of what we are tasting, depends on expectations that are learned, indeed schooled. Of the ancient fruit listed above, I have only tasted one: the Endicott Pear.³ (Another person in the tasting party, upon biting into a ripe fruit, exclaimed "Oh—sour—terrible!" He had never tasted out of hand a fruit intended for making Perry before. Half of the first pear trees shipped to America were intended to generate fruit for cider-making. These varieties tend to have a pronounced sharpness to their flavor that becomes bright when processed into alcohol.)

In 2017, fifteen apple varieties accounted for 90 percent of production in the United States. They monopolize groceries' produce bins: McIntosh, Fuji, Red Delicious, Gala, Crispin (or Mutsu), Braeburn, Honey Crisp, Jonagold, Granny Smith, Empire, Golden Delicious, Cameo, Jazz, Macoun, Ambrosia, Paula Red, Cortland, and Pink Lady.⁴ The oldest is McIntosh, which was introduced in 1811.⁵ Ten of the fifteen date from the last half of the twentieth century. All of these fruits were designed for versatility: they are so-called all arounders. We have little experience of the old apples bred and finely attuned to specific purposes—for drying, making apple sauce, baking, eating out of hand. Not knowing ahead of time the particular use of the apple, an eater risks misapprehending its taste.

I suppose the most 2017 thing about the experience that I have described above is that my audience is envisioned exclusively in the position of a consumer. None of you did the breeding that shaped the flavor of an apple, vegetable, or grain. We all operate at a moment when the creation of plants is for the most part conducted by a scientific priesthood of geneticists and commercial plant breeders. This is a recent development in history: 1887 in the United States marks a demarcation point in plant creation, for, in that year, the U. S. government established the system of agricultural experimental stations. Prior to this time, most grains, vegetables, and fruits were farmer improved, shaped by seed selection, natural mutation, and cross pollination.⁶ The oldest and most enduring varieties of vegetables so created are called landraces.

Since 2003, I have been closely involved in the preservation and restoration into cultivation of the landrace grains associated with southern food. In addition to my academic appointment, I...