| 词汇 | currants |
| 词源 | currants. Currants may taste nothing like them, but they take their name indirectly from grapes. In the early 14th centu- ry the chief place of export for the small seedless raisins made from grapes was Corinth, Greece. As Corinth was pronounced Corauntz in Anglo-French at the time, these dried raisins were called “raisins of Corauntz.” Later, the tart berries of the genus Ribes were given the same appellation because their plant clus- ters looked like the dried grapes or raisins of Corauntz. Corauntz was eventually corrupted to currants and this became the tasty fruit’s name. Wrote early-17th-century poet Richard Hughes: Puddings should be Full of currants for me: Boiled in a pail Tied in the tail Of an old bleached shirt; So hot that they hurt. The most famous dish made from red and white currants has to be the seedless currant jelly once laboriously made by pro- fessional “seeders,” who used goose feathers to delicately pick out the currant seeds without damaging the berries. A cur- rant preserve used to be a gourmet delicacy made only in Bar-le-Duc, France, on the banks of the Meuse. Ever since 1559, when Mary Stuart, later Mary Queen of Scots, was giv- en a jar of the rare substance, it was presented to every visit- ing chief of state. But a decade ago its last manufacturer went out of business, and the gastronomical rarity apparently is no more. |
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