The strawberry decision

Now, here’s my question: what is the yummiest way to serve fresh, delicious strawberries?

Is it strawberries with cream, or strawberries with vanilla ice-cream? With the Southern Hemisphere spring making our days beautiful, it’s time to enjoy a classic dessert. And what’s better than strawberries with cream or ice-cream? Unless, of course, you add a little rosewater or a splash of kirsch.

Strawberries and cream, I read on Wikipedia, were introduced to the court of English King Henry VIII by his advisor Thomas Wolsey. Henry VIII became king in 1509 and Wolsey soon gained an influential position in his court, and was the king’s Lord Chancellor from 1515 to 1529. It’s not certain which English summer it was when Wolsey’s chefs brought in the first bowls of strawberries and cream to tempt the royal palate. But for hundreds of years now, the English and their visitors have loved summer-time strawberries served with dairy-fresh, clotted cream.  

They might also have loved it with ice-cream – as we have it today. I’m sure Henry VIII, a man with a hearty taste for life, would have enjoyed it with his strawberries. But ice-cream was still developing. Chilled dessert treats were not new. The Chinese had chilled treats (of ice and rice) about 200 BC. People in the ancient Persian Empire poured concentrated grape juice over snow; and the Arabs had milk ices, sweetened with sugar and flavoured with rosewater, dried fruits and nuts. Not bad.

In Europe, the Roman Emperor Nero (54 to 68 AD) had ice brought from the mountains and combined with fruit toppings to create chilled delicacies. And records say that Catherine de’ Medici brought Italian chefs into France in 1533, when she came to marry the Duc d’Orlέ᷂ans (who became King Henry II). These Italian chefs are said to have had recipes for sorbets and ices.

Today, we are the lucky inheritors of this smart thinking and have a wonderful range of ice-creams. For my photograph, I’ve used strawberries with Gippsland Dairy pure double cream, on the left; and strawberries with Kohu Road ice cream vanilla flavour, made with Heilala vanilla, top and right. I can vouch that both variants were delicious, though I did have to go a bit easy on the double cream.

A short history of strawberries

I went back to Wikipedia to learn that the first strawberries our ancestors enjoyed were the woodland strawberries growing wild in the countryside. Such strawberries are mentioned in Roman literature for their medicinal purposes. The wild strawberry was seen in illuminated manuscripts and in Italian, Flemish and German art and in English miniatures. The woodland strawberry, Fragaria vesca, began to be cultivated in Europe in the early 1600s.

A great breakthrough came about when French explorer Amέ᷂dέe-Franꞔois Frέzier introduced a new strawberry variety, Fragaria chiloensis, from Chile into France in 1714. There it was crossed with the North American strawberry, Fragaria virginiana, sometime in the 1750s to produce the garden strawberry. The place was Brittany in France.  Our modern, cultivated strawberries, Fragaria x ananassa, grown around the world, come originally from this French cross-breeding.

Of course, the strawberry is not really a berry. Botanically, it is an aggregate accessory fruit. Each apparent ‘seed’ on the outside of the fruit is in fact one of the ovaries of the flower (which preceded the fruit), with a seed inside it.

Health benefits

Strawberries are rich sources of vitamin C, phyto-nutrients and minerals. They help fight infections and colds, are powerful anti-oxidants, contain folates, and are low in carbohydrates. So strawberries are good for you – although unfortunately, some people are allergic to them.

In Australia, we are lucky that strawberries are grown all year round to supply our fresh fruit needs; in our winter months, in Western Australia and Queensland, and at other times in Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and New South Wales.

The world’s biggest strawberry producer is the United States of America, followed by Turkey, Spain, Egypt and Mexico.