The other day in one of the local supermarkets we came across a plastic packet containing numerous strange-looking short, dark filaments. They looked a bit like cherry stems and, on closer examination, that is just what they proved to be. What, we wondered, could they possibly be for?
They were on a rack otherwise devoted to dried herbs, so perhaps they were an essential ingredient for some arcane delicacy? Not at all: they were offered as the basis of an infusion.
Of course, one is aware that the French are partial to infusions. The tea and coffee aisles of most supermarkets have almost as many of these in, for want of a better expression, teabag form as there are teas, bagged or not, and coffees, instant, ground, beans or decaf. No doubt, too, there are those enthusiasts who pick their own raw materials to make up individualistic tisanes to suit all tastes or none. Yet the idea of packaged cherry stalks still seems decidedly odd. An image is conjured up of teams of manual workers, painstakingly removing the stalks from the cherry harvest – perhaps from fruits destined for canning, bottling in armagnac or to be crystallised or glacéd – preparing them for drying, before bagging, sealing, labelling and boxing them for distribution. Could such a laborious process ever be economically viable at an industrial level? Even if so, would the result produce a more flavourful infusion than, say, the stones removed from cherries still offered as ingredients for cocktails (which presupposes that somebody must still make and drink them at home, rather than just at smart bars)?Such speculations are not readily resolved, but the discovery reminded me of yet another difference between French and British attitudes. French cuisine has always been more accommodating of herbs than has the British. Even though the teachings of Elizabeth David and her many successors has broken down much of the resistance to such ingredients, the tendency remains to stick to a more limited traditional range or to confine them to sauces and jellies – or to see them as the province of the health food shop, rather than the grocer’s.
Herbal remedies in Britain seem to be enjoying something of a revival, after a prolonged lapse since the days when they were regarded as normal medicines. When I was young, there were some people who chose to smoke herbal cigarettes, though even then, in the days when smoking was not regarded as dangerous (’Du Maurier – For Your Throat’s Sake’), the most that was claimed for them was that they were much cheaper, rather than healthier.
As far as I know, no one has ever published research showing that commercially-produced tisanes are any healthier than tea or coffee, though that is implicit in their presentation. Certainly, they are not a cheap option. However, it seems always to be the potential savings to be made from DIY drinks that attracts the British. Some years ago, the idea of making one’s own beer and wine was enormously popular in Britain. Shops offering brew-it-yourself kits, separate ingredients and all the paraphernalia required for the purpose mushroomed in every High Street in the land. Even chain stores like Boots the Chemists devoted substantial departments to the same ranges of products. Virtually all are long since gone but, in their heyday, they thrived on the simple proposition that the beer brewed in one’s own garage cost only pence per pint. The fact that very few of the resultant brews were at all palatable was not a deterrent. The home brewers’ pride in their achievement was enough to make them disregard the difference in quality from the professional equivalents, even though their enthusiasm was not always shared by their friends. Probably, however, it was this that sowed the seeds of the fad’s demise some years later.
The idea does not appear ever to have caught on in France. The French are not a nation of beer-drinkers and most British beer-drinkers will tell you that French beers are in no way comparable to British ones, being either lager-like or heavy and sweetish, with no local equivalent of a British pint of bitter. By the same token, if the French make their own wine, they do it in the same way as professional wine-makers. They do not generally, as some British people still do, make wines from other than grapes.
A friend in England went to evening classes on wine-making and told me that in the opening lesson it was explained that wine could be made out of absolutely anything. To make the point, the instructor steeped an old boot as a first stage in a process that would be completed by the end of the course. All the students were asked to select their own principal ingredients, mostly culled from plants in their own gardens. The course concluded with a party at which all the different wines were tasted and shared. There were the inevitable elderflower versions, as well as some made from different fruits and even leaves from selected trees. Though his recollection of the different flavours was, he admitted, a little hazy, he was quite clear that the wine made from the old boot was ‘just as good as all the others’ – which was only what I should have expected.
At much about the same time, there was a fashion for producing one’s own spirits. This was illegal in Britain at that time, and probably still is, but the thought that carrot whisky, for instance, could be made for a fraction of the price of a bottle of real Scotch was incentive enough for some to disregard that objection. Distilling is more difficult that wine-making, as was evidenced by the experience of a friend whose home-made poteen, maturing in the warmth of his airing-cupboard, exploded with devastating effect on his bed-linen.
Another friend took great pride in showing me how he was making a sort of brandy out of a vegetable marrow. This entailed chopping the end of the marrow, carefully hollowing out all the seeds and some of the flesh from the interior, piercing the other end, filling the cavity with brown sugar and topping it up periodically with water. Because of the smell, he hung the marrow up outside, with a pan beneath to catch the liquid which dripped from the bottom. It was not the smell in the end but the obscene appearance of this decoration that caused his wife to insist that the experiment be abandoned.
There is a longer British tradition behind the making of sloe gin but, since this requires mixing the sloe juice with ordinary commercial gin, that has always struck me as a singularly pointless exercise – not least because the sloes, so far from improving the flavour of the gin, if anything achieve the opposite.
In France, it has long been legitimate to make one’s own spirits, though limited to 20 litres a year. This tradition seems now to be dying out, because it relied upon the availability of local professionals to carry out the distillation. Often this was done, in country areas, by mobile stills transported around the farms, orchards and vineyards. As the operators retire, they are not being replaced and most French drinkers of non-French spirits now have to rely on commercial products, available in supermarkets from British whisky and gin makers or, more cheaply, in unknown brands carrying labels with dubious visual references to Scotland or London respectively. At least we have yet to see here the tartan-clad Japanese whisky on sale in Canada that boasts that it is ‘made entirely from Scottish grapes’.
