Quotes of the Day

Just say no to melons. that's what pope PAUL II might do, if he had a second chance. He learned firsthand about indulging in the pleasures of a certain kind of flesh. On a hot summer afternoon in 1471, His Holiness was reportedly lounging in the Vatican's backyard, enjoying the sun, the fresh air and some refreshing slices of melon. Then he died. The reputed cause: apoplexy, induced by overconsumption of iced Cucumis melo.

Since practically the day human beings first walked the earth, we've had trouble turning down fruit, and by 1800 the Western world was in something of a fruit frenzy. People wanted specimens to look at, to study, to paint, to read about, to display, to write about and, occasionally, to eat. In 1804 George Brookshaw, a London cabinetmaker who specialized in furniture adorned with paintings of fruit, turned his full attention to cataloguing and depicting fruit. His primary mission was to educate. "Some of our best fruits have been suffered to be neglected," he wrote. Pomona Britannica, published in 1812 and reprinted for the first time this season (Taschen; 200 pages), was his effort to right that wrong. An extravagant p.r. brochure for fruit, Brookshaw's best-of list featured 90 plates showing 256 varieties of 15 different species of fruit and nut.

The plates of fruits in the new edition of Pomona Britannica are arranged as they were in Brookshaw's book, as well as in roughly the order they would appear on one's table: seasonally. He starts with strawberries — shown in hues from white to the familiar scarlet and the rarer black — and other "aggregate" fruits like raspberries, currants and gooseberries. Next come stone fruits — cherries that deepen in shade from pale orange-red to deep purple; plums in all the primary colors; apricots; peaches; nectarines. He includes pineapples — brought to Europe by Columbus and one of the more popular fruits of the 18th and 19th centuries — as well as grapes, melons and nuts, before ending with pears and apples.

Brookshaw wanted to promote "the highest flavored fruit, and from the earliest to the latest period possible." But by the standards of today's supermarket, most varieties in his book did not pass the test. When was the last time you saw a Winter Swan's Egg Pear at the store or had the juice from a Grimwood's Royal Charlotte Peach dribble down your chin? These fruits weren't commercially viable in the 1800s, and those that have survived are even less so today. "Quite a number of varieties were grown in walled gardens of big country homes in the 19th century, when a lot of time and money could be devoted to raising interesting fruit," says Emma-Jane Lamont, curator of Britain's National Fruit Collections. A supermarket-friendly variety "must come into bearing early and provide regular heavy crops" of fruit that doesn't bruise easily and stores well.

Some specialty grocers or farmer's markets do offer heirloom fruit varieties, and if you're lucky enough to find some, you can try the 19th-century recipes added to this edition of Pomona Britannica. These recipes give a sense of what was done with fruit back in the day when a "generous amount of sugar" was as precise as most cooking instructions got. They read as they were written, so prepare to improvise for the modern kitchen — most of us don't have upper ovens anymore and you'll have to stock up on butter to make most of these dishes. One of the easiest and tastiest is the apricots charlotte, a simple, rustic concoction that pairs the crunch of buttered, sugar-dipped French bread with the melt-in-your-mouth softness of simmered apricots. And if you've missed the apricot's glorious, but short, season, the recipe also works well with peaches.

Those with a weakness for trivia will find gems throughout the text, which, again, is an addition to the original Pomona. Did you know that currants have a patron saint, John the Baptist? (His feast day, June 24, is around the time of the harvest.) Or that gooseberries have a literary pedigree stretching back to 13th-century France? (The poet Rutebeuf mentions them.) Or that drinking water after eating lots of cherries can cause indigestion? (The liquid swells the pectin in the fruit.) Pomona Britannica doesn't provide answers to all questions. Brookshaw said that his guide, studied seriously, would lead to "a garden well planted," but it didn't provide particulars as to the plants' cultivation and care. And terrific as the fruits look, he never tells us how they taste. For the clues on that, we have to rely on circumstantial evidence, on other writers of the day and on the examples of fruit-lovers like Pope Paul II. In his case, the melon, it seems, was to die for.

• JEFF CHU
• A 19th century introduction to England's old varieties