Let your
condiments
be in the condition of your senses.
Thoreau - Excursions and Poems
What is sour in the
house a bracing walk makes sweet. Some of these apples might be
labeled, "To be eaten in the wind. "
Of course no flavors are thrown away; they are intended for the taste
that is up to them. Some apples have two distinct flavors, and perhaps
one half of them must be eaten in the house, the other outdoors. One
Peter Whitney wrote from Northborough in 1782, for the Proceedings of
the Boston Academy, describing an apple tree in that town "producing
fruit of opposite qualities, part of the same apple being frequently
sour and the other sweet;" also some all sour, and others all sweet,
and this diversity on all parts of the tree.
There is a wild apple on Nawshawtuct Hill in my town which has to me a
peculiarly pleasant bitter tang, not perceived till it is
three-quarters tasted. It remains on the tongue. As you eat it, it
smells exactly like a squash-bug. It is a sort of triumph to eat and
relish it.
I hear that the fruit of a kind of plum tree in Provence is "called
_Prunes sibarelles_, because it is impossible to whistle after having
eaten them, from their sourness. " But perhaps they were only eaten in
the house and in summer, and if tried out-of-doors in a stinging
atmosphere, who knows but you could whistle an octave higher and
clearer?
In the fields only are the sours and bitters of Nature appreciated;
just as the woodchopper eats his meal in a sunny glade, in the middle
of a winter day, with content, basks in a sunny ray there, and dreams
of summer in a degree of cold which, experienced in a chamber, would
make a student miserable. They who are at work abroad are not cold,
but rather it is they who sit shivering in houses. As with
temperatures, so with flavors; as with cold and heat, so with sour and
sweet. This natural raciness, the sours and bitters which the diseased
palate refuses, are the true condiments.
Let your condiments be in the condition of your senses. To appreciate
the flavor of these wild apples requires vigorous and healthy senses,
_papillae_ firm and erect on the tongue and palate, not easily
flattened and tamed.
From my experience with wild apples, I can understand that there may
be reason for a savage's preferring many kinds of food which the
civilized man rejects. The former has the palate of an outdoor man. It
takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild fruit.
What a healthy out-of-door appetite it takes to relish the apple of
life, the apple of the world, then!
"Nor is it every apple I desire,
Nor that which pleases every palate best;
'Tis not the lasting Deuxan I require,
Nor yet the red-cheeked Greening I request,
Nor that which first beshrewed the name of wife,
Nor that whose beauty caused the golden strife:
No, no! bring me an apple from the tree of life. "
So there is one _thought_ for the field, another for the house. I
would have my thoughts, like wild apples, to be food for walkers, and
will not warrant them to be palatable if tasted in the house.
THEIR BEAUTY
Almost all wild apples are handsome. They cannot be too gnarly and
crabbed and rusty to look at. The gnarliest will have some redeeming
traits even to the eye. You will discover some evening redness dashed
or sprinkled on some protuberance or in some cavity. It is rare that
the summer lets an apple go without streaking or spotting it on some
part of its sphere. It will have some red stains, commemorating the
mornings and evenings it has witnessed; some dark and rusty blotches,
in memory of the clouds and foggy, mildewy days that have passed over
it; and a spacious field of green reflecting the general face of
nature,--green even as the fields; or a yellow ground, which implies a
milder flavor,--yellow as the harvest, or russet as the hills.
house a bracing walk makes sweet. Some of these apples might be
labeled, "To be eaten in the wind. "
Of course no flavors are thrown away; they are intended for the taste
that is up to them. Some apples have two distinct flavors, and perhaps
one half of them must be eaten in the house, the other outdoors. One
Peter Whitney wrote from Northborough in 1782, for the Proceedings of
the Boston Academy, describing an apple tree in that town "producing
fruit of opposite qualities, part of the same apple being frequently
sour and the other sweet;" also some all sour, and others all sweet,
and this diversity on all parts of the tree.
There is a wild apple on Nawshawtuct Hill in my town which has to me a
peculiarly pleasant bitter tang, not perceived till it is
three-quarters tasted. It remains on the tongue. As you eat it, it
smells exactly like a squash-bug. It is a sort of triumph to eat and
relish it.
I hear that the fruit of a kind of plum tree in Provence is "called
_Prunes sibarelles_, because it is impossible to whistle after having
eaten them, from their sourness. " But perhaps they were only eaten in
the house and in summer, and if tried out-of-doors in a stinging
atmosphere, who knows but you could whistle an octave higher and
clearer?
In the fields only are the sours and bitters of Nature appreciated;
just as the woodchopper eats his meal in a sunny glade, in the middle
of a winter day, with content, basks in a sunny ray there, and dreams
of summer in a degree of cold which, experienced in a chamber, would
make a student miserable. They who are at work abroad are not cold,
but rather it is they who sit shivering in houses. As with
temperatures, so with flavors; as with cold and heat, so with sour and
sweet. This natural raciness, the sours and bitters which the diseased
palate refuses, are the true condiments.
Let your condiments be in the condition of your senses. To appreciate
the flavor of these wild apples requires vigorous and healthy senses,
_papillae_ firm and erect on the tongue and palate, not easily
flattened and tamed.
From my experience with wild apples, I can understand that there may
be reason for a savage's preferring many kinds of food which the
civilized man rejects. The former has the palate of an outdoor man. It
takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild fruit.
What a healthy out-of-door appetite it takes to relish the apple of
life, the apple of the world, then!
"Nor is it every apple I desire,
Nor that which pleases every palate best;
'Tis not the lasting Deuxan I require,
Nor yet the red-cheeked Greening I request,
Nor that which first beshrewed the name of wife,
Nor that whose beauty caused the golden strife:
No, no! bring me an apple from the tree of life. "
So there is one _thought_ for the field, another for the house. I
would have my thoughts, like wild apples, to be food for walkers, and
will not warrant them to be palatable if tasted in the house.
THEIR BEAUTY
Almost all wild apples are handsome. They cannot be too gnarly and
crabbed and rusty to look at. The gnarliest will have some redeeming
traits even to the eye. You will discover some evening redness dashed
or sprinkled on some protuberance or in some cavity. It is rare that
the summer lets an apple go without streaking or spotting it on some
part of its sphere. It will have some red stains, commemorating the
mornings and evenings it has witnessed; some dark and rusty blotches,
in memory of the clouds and foggy, mildewy days that have passed over
it; and a spacious field of green reflecting the general face of
nature,--green even as the fields; or a yellow ground, which implies a
milder flavor,--yellow as the harvest, or russet as the hills.
