By Joel Denker
Its scent imbues Earl Gray tea and its peel is essential for the British marmalade. Born in the East, the scarlet-skinned sour orange captivated the West several hundred years before the arrival of its sweet cousin in early sixteenth century Europe. Domesticated in India, the orange was loved for the intoxicating fragrance of its skin and flowers. It was generally not coveted for eating and juicing. The tree, which had dark green foliage and whose flowers bloomed in beautiful white colors, was planted to ornament the landscape.
Hindus called the fruit naranga, a word whose first syllable means fragrance. The Persians, who adopted it from India, named the orange narang. The versatile fruit, which grew wild along the Caspian, brought its aroma to Persian cooking. Blossoms were used for jam and the skin perfumed rice dishes and stews.
The Arabs, who transported it to the Mediterranean, discovered the fruit during their reign in Persia in the seventh century A.D. Like so many other elements of Persian culture, the fruit seduced the invaders. They soon made the sour orange their own, changing its name to naranj because they couldn’t pronounce the g.
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To learn more about oranges, see The Carrot Purple and Other Curious Stories of the Food We Eat, coming in October from Rowman & Littlefield: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442248861/The-Carrot-Purple-and-Other-Curious-Stories-of-the-Food-We-Eat.
