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How the Lemon was Invented

How the Lemon was Invented

2023-05-26 09:17:23

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Lemons

How do you make a lemon?  Foolish query, isn’t it?  You simply take the seeds out of 1 and plant them, and look forward to the tree to return up, proper?  That’s true, however it hasn’t at all times been that straightforward.  Lemons at this time are a extensively cultivated citrus fruit, with a taste utilized in cuisines of nations the place no lemon tree would ever develop.  You may assume that it was only a matter of historic peoples discovering the timber, having fun with their fruit and rising extra of them, however that’s not true.  The lemon is a human invention that’s perhaps just a few thousand years outdated.

The primary lemons got here from East Asia, presumably southern China or Burma.  (Nowadays, some want to discuss with Burma as Myanmar.  I’ll attempt to keep out of that controversy right here and persist with fruit.)  The precise date of the lemon’s first cultivation just isn’t recognized, however scientists determine it’s been round for greater than 4,000 years.  The lemon is a cross breed of a number of fruits.  One fruit is the bitter orange, greatest recognized within the west for its use in marmalade, cocktails, and tea.  The bitter orange has about six totally different varieties, the most effective recognized being the Seville orange (the well-known ingredient in marmalade) and the bergamot orange (utilized in Earl Gray tea).  The bitter orange itself is a hybrid of two different citrus fruits: the pomelo and the mandarin.

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Bitter oranges

To create the lemon, the bitter orange was cross bred with the citron.  In most languages of Europe, citron is the phrase for lemon, deriving from the Latin phrase citrus.  This will trigger some confusion, because the citron and the lemon are two totally different fruits.  Luckily for English audio system, we use totally different phrases for them and thus have a neater time holding them straight in our heads.  The citron appears rather a lot just like the lemons which are so common at this time.  The citron’s pores and skin isn’t as easy because the lemon’s, however the coloration is about the identical.  The fruit appears totally different, however tastes about the identical.  The primary benefit a lemon has over a citron is that citrons don’t yield a lot juice; lemons do.  The citron is used rather a lot in conventional Chinese language medication, however as a foodstuff, it’s rather a lot much less versatile than the lemon is.

Image result for citron
Observe the thick pores and skin of the citron.

Regularly the lemon made its manner westward, finally spreading across the Persian and Arab worlds.  By the primary century BCE, lemons made their technique to Italy.  In 1493, Christopher Columbus introduced lemon seeds to the New World on his second voyage, spreading the fruit to 5 totally different continents.

In 1747, Scottish doctor James Lind was researching the causes and preventions of scurvy, which was a specific plague for sailors, particularly since sea voyages lasting for weeks and for months had been changing into extra frequent.  Lind performed one of many first medical medical trials in historical past, and found that lemon juice might forestall scurvy.  This was fairly a breakthrough, because the idea of nutritional vitamins didn’t exist but.  The Royal Navy began carrying lemon juice on all its ships, when attainable, however it might be some time earlier than lemons had been straightforward to get in ample provide for the Royal Navy.  The Portuguese Navy had already discovered that citrus staves off scurvy, and had been planting orange and lemon timber alongside their delivery routes by the late 1400s.  The distribution downside of lemons would in the end be solved by the center of the nineteenth century by a person named Lachlin Rose, who patented a product referred to as Rose’s Lime Juice.  This labored in addition to lemons, and the Royal Navy mandated that the product be issued to all ships.  That is the explanation British sailors had been often known as “limeys”, a time period that finally grew to become a pejorative for all British individuals.

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Right this moment there are over two dozen commercially produced forms of lemons.  Apart from flavoring fish, pastries and different meals, they’re additionally utilized in medicines and cleaners, making it one in all humanity’s best improvements.

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