If you notice, you can meet her within the most sudden places: in Chinese culture, related to medical and education – the phrase to outline an academical club is apricot altar; within the Egyptian museums, next to the grave goods, as proof of her long-standing familiarity with human race; as a savoury flavouring in Japanese cuisine, in the shape of umeboshi; as a national fruit in Armenia; in Shakespeare’s Richard II («Go, bind thou up yon dangling apricocks, which, like unruly children, make their sire stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight», intimates the gardener to his assistant within the third act of the tragedy); as juice on the tables throughout Ramadan with the name of �amar al-Din; in a seventeenthcentury masterpiece by the German painter Georg Flegel preserved in the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt. No way you can avoid her, no way you can miss her. Haughty since childhood, to be honest. With that know-it-all air admired by everyone for her virtues and her early talent, so early that the Roman called her Praecox, because her family tree already blooms in March, when we are still experiencing the winter bites while some others are in a deep sleep. Perpetually praised by everyone for her good looks, as in Emilia-Romagna where she is called the Imola Beauty, or in Campania where admired people point to her from afar, hailing her as Smooth little mouth while whispering behind her Thorny little mouth. It is rumoured that her ancestors are from China, from where they migrated to Central Asia moving to Armenia, where they met Alexander the Great, reaching Rome in 70-60 B.C. to finally conquer all of the Mediterranean basin. But we are not here to question ourselves regarding who comes from where, since everything now placed on our table was once stranger in a strange land. So, let's just face it: she comes from a highly well-liked family, prized as rare, as in sixteenth-century England where solely kings, queens and a lucky few had the privilege of meeting her in their own garden, attributing to her the additional power to heal cancer patients. Of course, she never misses an opportunity to enumerate her virtues in a real long list: rich in vitamins A and C and thus an ally of health, less than 1% fat, just 48 calories, 11% carbohydrates, 1% proteins, 86% water plus B vitamins, high calcium, manganese, phosphorus and potassium. Will it truly be mirrored honesty, her, or there is something, at a closer look, that needs to be confessed? Clearly yes: within herself, at the middle of all these virtues, there's a toxic kernel, the armelline, a tough and rough soul containing 0.9% amygdalin, a substance with a bitterish aftersensation forming by hydrolysis the hydrocyanic acid – a toxic poison, in large doses, for human being. Despite this, and by virtue of their slightly bitter taste, armellines are reduced to essence to become ingredients in sweets like amaretti, in which their characterizing flavour is key. Thus, using them sparingly and keeping children away from them is essential. Perhaps is this the reason why, as noted by William Turner in his Names of herbs in 1548, the Greeks called her Malus Armeniaca, where that "malus" stands for the apple tree (whose scientific name is indeed “malus”), of course, but maybe also for evil (“malum”)? On the other hand, in different times, she had a reputation anything but respectable, if she was considered to be a powerful aphrodisiac. Let's begin by remembering that, for instance, in the time of Elizabeth I she used to be known by the equivocal name of apricock, and additionally to suggesting mere wordplays, she was served on the tables of the British aristocracy as an unequivocal stimulant, and we end up saying that the Australian Aborigines used to reduce her to pulp and rub it on the genitalia as a perfume within the preparations that preceded the sexual act. But it’s not over here, because we know that always in England, in 1669, the author John Lacy in The dumb lady suggested that the best of marriages for a woman was the one contracted to a gardener, because Ay, that she might taste of his apricock! Many virtues and as many vices. It might therefore have been thought that, once drawn a line and made the due calculations, she emerged victorious, but no, that’s not it, because whatever early matures, equally early decays. Her destiny was thus fulfilled only when, perfectly ripe, she had about made up her mind never to be picked. Then, and only then, was she thought of being ready to offer her best by those that solely wished to take advantage of her, because fate has a sense of humor to sell, and so the poor thing ended up in pieces, pitted, dried, in syrup, preserved in cans, frozen, reduced to juice, jam, jelly, compote, brushed on cakes, stuffed into soft and buttery doughs, abused in pastry cooking in any way possible. Maybe a dramatic ending, or maybe not. Isn't that, in fact, the destiny that the Favourite wishes for herself? 45
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDUzNDc=