Wimbledon is all about strawberries and cream (and naturally tennis). The membership itself describes strawberries and cream as “a true icon of The Championships”.
Whilst a meal at one of the most membership’s eating places can set you again £130 or extra, a bowl of the long-lasting dish is a modest £2.70 (up from £2.50 in 2024 – the primary worth upward thrust in 15 years). In 2024 guests munched their manner thru just about 2 million berries.
Strawberries and cream has an extended affiliation with Wimbledon. Even sooner than garden tennis used to be added to its actions, the All England Croquet Membership (now the All England Garden Tennis & Croquet Membership) used to be serving strawberries and cream to guests. They’d have anticipated no much less. Throughout Victorian Britain, strawberries and cream used to be a staple of lawn events of every type. Non-public affairs, political fundraisers and county cricket fits all usually served the dish.
Along string bands and video games of garden tennis, strawberries and cream have been some of the pleasures that Victorians anticipated to stumble upon at a fête or lawn celebration. Because of this, one statistician wrote within the Dundee Night time Telegraph in 1889, Londoners by myself fed on 12 million berries an afternoon over the summer time. At that price, he defined, if strawberries have been to be had year-round, Britons would spend 24 occasions extra on strawberries than on missionary paintings, and two times up to on training.
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Wimbledon’s garden tennis championships have been held in overdue June or early July – within the midst, in different phrases, of strawberry season.
Consuming strawberries and cream had lengthy been a distinctly seasonal excitement. 17th-century menu plans for sublime banquets presented strawberries, both with cream or steeped (fairly deliciously, and I like to recommend you do this) in rose water, white wine, and sugar – as an acceptable dish for the month of June.
Strawberries and Cream via Robert Gemmell Hutchison (1855–1936).
Nationwide Galleries of Scotland, CC BY-NC
They have been, within the view of the Seventeenth-century gardener John Parkinson, “a cooling and pleasant dish in the hot summer season”. They have been, briefly, a summer time meals. That used to be nonetheless the case within the 1870s, when the Wimbledon tennis championship used to be established.
This modified dramatically with the discovery of mechanical refrigeration. From the overdue nineteenth century, new applied sciences enabled the worldwide motion of chilled and frozen meals throughout huge oceans and areas.
Home ice-boxes and fridges adopted. Those fashionable units have been hailed as liberating us from the tyranny of seasons. Because the Women House Magazine mag proclaimed triumphantly in 1929: “Refrigeration wipes out seasons and distances … We grow perishable products in the regions best suited to them instead of being forced to stick close to the large markets.” Consuming seasonally, or in the community, used to be a tiresome constraint and it used to be releasing so that you could experience meals at no matter time of 12 months we desired.
Because of this, issues out historian Susan Friedberg, our thought of “freshness” used to be remodeled. Shoppers “stopped expecting fresh food to be just-picked or just-caught or just-killed. Instead, they expected to find and keep it in the refrigerator.”
Strawberries and cream being loved at Wimbledon.
bonchan/Shutterstock
These days, when we will purchase strawberries 12 months around, now we have in large part misplaced the joy that used to accompany introduction of the strawberry season. Color dietary supplements and grocery store magazines do their highest to drum up some enthusiasm for British strawberries, however we’re a ways from the times when poets may just rhapsodise about dairy maids “dreaming of their strawberries and cream” within the month of Might.
Strawberries and cream, as soon as a “rare service” loved within the brief months from overdue April to early July, are actually a season-less staple, to be had just about 12 months around from the worldwide networks of industrial growers who provide Britain’s meals. The particular buzz about Wimbledon’s iconic dish of strawberries and cream is a glimpse into an previous time, and reminds us that it used to be now not at all times so.
