Since I spend a ridiculous amount of time reflecting on the character of regional identity, as an intellectual obsession, but also think a lot about food, as a personal obsession, it is no surprise that these two preoccupations intersect and cross-pollinate. Foodways feature powerfully in the self-identification of cultural and regional identity. Recently, for instance, I talked about how German-Russians in South Dakota have deployed chislic as a cultural icon.
Last November Dr. Kelley and I spent time in a new research area for us: the Barossa, an enclave of South Australia settled in the 1840s by German-speaking Prussians, or Silesians. Theirs is a complicated ethnic and regional identity. Evangelical Lutherans, like me!, they kept to themselves as much as they could for generations, but then came the Great War, when their neighbors of English ancestry would not leave them alone, but sought to eradicate all things German. If you’re from someplace like McIntosh County, North Dakota, you know what I’m talking about.
One front of the campaign for cultural suppression was culinary, which included publication of a cookbook, in English, entitled Barossa Cookery. German culinary tradition was almost completely absent from the compilation. It was all English stuff. German tradition survived, however, and reappeared, alongside the English, in subsequent revisions of the cookbook.
In the late twentieth century, developers strove to establish the Barossa as a new-world center for winemaking based on that noble grape, Syrah, rebranded as Shiraz. Tourism goes hand in hand with winemaking, and developers found that the exhibition of German ethnicity was great for tourism.
Exploring this real and imagined region of Australia, particularly the beautifully historic community of Tanunda, we happened into an independent bookstore, the Raven’s Parlour. My eye fell, and my interest fixed, on a recent book, Barossa Food, by a daughter of the country, Angela Heuzenroeder. This woman not only gives me recipes to try at home but also is my new model for how to write about food in regional culture.
In the Barossa, as Heuzenroeder recounts, there was a food, a melon, the German-speaking people called Pompen, and English speakers called pie melon. This was not a German introduction. I think the connection was British imperial, coming to Australia by way of South Africa, possibly South Asia, possibly the Near East. The Barossa Germans, however, appropriated the pie melon and made great use of it, often mixing with other fruits for pastries, jams, and sauces.
All this resonated, because pie melons were known and used, too, on the northern plains, and here, too, the connection is imperial. The culture of pie melons, although present among various immigrant groups, was most prominent among the Germans from Russia. They acquired this small, round, tough-skinned, white-fleshed, bland-tasting melon as settlers in the Black Sea colonies of the Russian Empire. Thence it came as cultural baggage to Dakota Territory.
Nowadays we call pie melons citron, and hardly anyone knows anything about them. Back in the 1990s the garden writer Darrel Koehler wrote some columns prompting comment from several folk who grew citron and used it, often for candied melon, as in fruitcake, or for sauces. There has been, however, to my knowledge, no citron revival on the plains.
Citron were once widely grown and much talked about on the Great Plains, however, and I’m prepared to tell you about it. In the meantime, if you are an aficionado of pie melons, I’d love to hear from you.
