THE TRADITION OF THE CHRISTMAS RAISIN As we venture nearer Christmas and all its festivities, there will be few of us who could avoid raisins - the mainstay fruit of the season. There is no doubt that the dried grape, thought by some religious experts to be the downfall of Adam when tempted by Eve (and not the apple after all), is very much part of our celebrations. Whether in a mince pie, Christmas pudding or fruit and nut chocolate, this little fruit packs a real punch. The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, wrote informed articles in 300BC about how to get the best from a vine, while the Latin poet, Virgil, was famed for his poem The Georgics, which told how to make raisin wine. History has many references to grapes, both fresh and dried. The earliest cultivated vine was in Anatolia and it is to be believed that Noah landed his ark and sowed the first grape seed on what is now known as Mount Ararat in Turkey. Since much earlier times there have been historical records of the humble grape, such as evidence to support Egyptians cultivating them and hailing raisins as so precious that they kept them in tombs to take to the afterlife. Grapes are used regularly in all forms of art; often seen on ancient stonework and also on Greek urns, which are often decorated with scenes of grape harvests. The 17th Century painting by Clara Peeters - a rarity of the time, being female, - was a Still Life of Flowers and Dried Fruit, indicating the very importance that artists of the time gave to the raisin and its associates.
The love affair with the fruit has never diminished. The raisin has travelled across all walks of life and far and wide across the globe - being used in a range of cultures and also by Queen Victoria. She imported raisins from South Africa and when she opened the gardens of Hampton Court to the general public in 1838, the main attraction was a grapevine planted 100 years earlier in Queen Mary’s exotic plant collection. The technology behind what brings us the raisins we buy in our supermarkets hasn’t changed very much. Still the only way to dry them is in the sun - preferably the Californian variety. With no additions, changes or adjustment to the natural product, the raisin is very much what it was thousands of years ago. What probably has changed is what we are prepared to do with it. Recipes have expanded across generations and cultures to the point where there are thousands of ways of using the fruit in cooking - with many of these variations being particularly good to use at Christmas time. There is even a saying that the first mince pie of the festive season is lucky and it is bad luck to refuse it. This might explain why £50m is spent on buying more than 370 million mince pies over the Christmas period - with every Brit eating an average of 27 mince pies each.
