The right way to eat mangoes according to Victorian women

British settlers in India under the British Raj may not have eaten fresh mangoes with their hands, but they did develop a taste for preserved mangoes in the form of chutneys. Though the details were never documented, Major Grey’s Chutney was reputedly created by a 19th-century British Army officer who served in British India. A mild condiment available widely in the United States from several manufacturers, its ingredients include mango, raisins, vinegar, lime juice, onion, tamarind extract, sweeteners and various spices. Chutneys are an essential element of the “Ploughman’s lunch”, an English cold meal based on bread, cheese and sweet/sour condiments, originally conceived for workmen to take out into the fields.

Intrepid Victorian women wrote about their encounters with the mango in locations where it grows. Botanical explorer, artist and worldwide traveller Marianne North documented the mango tree, its flowers and its fruit in several of her paintings, including one created in India in the 1870s titled Foliage and Flowers of the Clove, Fruit of the Mango and Hindoo God of Wisdom. She presented more than 900 works of art to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in the 1880s. In her notes, she writes, “The Mango (Mangifera indica L) is generally regarded as one of the most delicious tropical fruits, though there are many varieties, differing very much in quality. In an unripe state the fruit is much used in tarts and preserved in sugar or vinegar.”

Lady Annie Brassey (1839-1887) was a widely read Victorian author who travelled the world with her husband, five children and their dog on board their luxury yacht. In her published travel notes, A Voyage in the “Sunbeam”: Our Home on the Ocean for Eleven Months (1878), she described the first day she tasted mangoes:

the King of Fruits – a combination of Apricot and Pine apple, and the best sorts certainly have a subtle blending of many agreeable flavours, but the common seedling tree bears fruit in which a mixture of turpentine, and treacle is usually prominent, and of the sorts that are greatly valued by those who have lived with them from childhood are very disagreeable to strangers. The best sorts are without fibre in the pulp, and are eaten with a spoon, like custard, but some fibrous sorts are celebrated for delicious piquant flavour and are eaten by sucking the pulp pressed out through a hole in the skin.

She further writes,

To enjoy mangoes thoroughly you ought not to eat them in company, but leaning over the side of the ship in the early morning, with your sleeves tucked up to your elbows, using no knife and fork, but tearing off the skin with your teeth and sucking the abundant juice.

Lady Maria Callcott (1785-1842) was the daughter of a naval officer who lived and travelled widely in India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). In her Journal of a Residence in India, published in 1812, she describes Mazagong’s (a section of today’s Indian city of Mumbai) fame as due to the mangoes grown there, “certainly the best fruit I ever tasted”. She noted,

the parent tree, from which all those of this species have been grafted, is honoured during the fruit season by a guard of sepoys; and in the reign of Shah Jahan, couriers were stationed between Delhi and Mahratta coast to secure an abundant and fresh supply of mangoes for the royal table.

Isabella Lucy Bird (1831-1904) authored numerous books of her travels and observations, including The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither (1883) about adventures in the Malay Peninsula. An explorer, photographer and naturalist, she was the first woman to be elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. She describes her experience with mangoes in the Hawaiian Islands:

Mr K, from whose house we started, has the finest mango grove on the islands. It is a fine foliaged tree, but is everywhere covered with a black blight, which gives the groves the appearance of being in mourning, as the tough, glutinous film covers all the older leaves. The mango is an exotic fruit, and people think a great deal of it, and send boxes of mangoes as presents to their friends. It is yellow, with a reddish bloom, something like a magnum bonum plum, three times magnified. The only way of eating it in comfort is to have a tub of water beside you. It should be eaten in private by anyone who wants to retain the admiration of his friends. It has an immense stone, and a disproportionately small pulp. I think it tastes strongly of turpentine at first, but this is a heresy.

With a few exceptions, mangoes cannot be grown in the British Isles or almost anywhere in Continental Europe except in small micro-climates along the southern coast of Spain near Málaga and in Sicily. Farmers have been replacing olive groves with more profitable mango trees, though this is proving to be controversial. The additional water required for fruit production in the Mediterranean climate is changing the balance of resources.

Climate change is allowing the cultivation of mangoes as a speciality product in a very limited area on the island of Sicily. Sicilian farmers have successfully cultivated lemons and oranges for centuries, but these traditional fruits now must compete with cheaper imports. Because the climate of the island has risen 1.5°c (2.7°f) in the last one hundred years, tropical fruits, particularly mangoes, have become a viable option for the local economy.

While mangoes are not widely cultivated commercially in Europe or in the US, the flavour of mango is becoming more and more popular. Technical improvements in transport systems increasingly allow the successful importation of the fruit from mango-producing countries year round, including from Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Mali, as well as Brazil, Peru, Dominican Republic and Mexico.

Excerpted with permission from Mango: A Global History, Constance L Kirker and Mary Newman, Pan Macmillan.

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