I have only three persimmon recipes in my database. One is Michael Twitty‘s recipe for Red Straw Persimmon Beer. The other two are for pudding. For practical reasons, I chose one of the latter. (I also used Japanese persimmons from Hungry Harvest.)
My recipe was contributed to “Queen Anne Goes to the Kitchen,” by Isabel Atkinson Lieber(1904-1974). The wife of Major General Albert Carl Lieber, Isabel traveled around a good bit in her lifetime. But she was born in Chestertown and she and her husband are buried at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Kent County.
I remember the first time I tasted persimmons. The fruit grew wild on a tree beside the phone company building where my aunt worked. We got a stepstool and some baskets and gathered some one fall.
Always entranced by wild ingredients, I was excited by the knowledge that Native Americans had used these fruits for food and medicine. I bit into the raw fruit and was rebuffed with a horrible astringent sourness that dried my mouth and squished up my face. I didn’t know then that persimmons, valuable though they are, need coaxing to make them palatable and edible. Some people freeze and thaw them to emulate the natural process that ripens the fruit.
One of the most commonly grown fruit trees on earth, according to wikipedia, the majority of persimmons are grown in China, where they make their way into doughnuts, sweet soups, cakes and cookies. According to “the Beijinger” blog, “orange persimmons are a sure sign that fall has arrived in Beijing.” Like the Native Americans, different Asian cultures have long used persimmons for both food and medicine – not necessarily discrete categories for many people around the world.
Persimmon trees are a member of the same family of trees as Ebony, which grows in East Africa and has been used for fruit and, more famously, wood. In West Africa, the local persimmon fruit is known as jackalberry due to its popularity with wild animals, who compete with humans for the ripe fruit.
Michael Twitty has written a great deal about persimmons, which he gathered with his father, and lovingly calls “‘simmons.” The Wolof people of West Africa used the name “alom” for the fruit, which they use for medicine, food, and beverages. Wolof people were among the ethnic groups of people who were kidnapped and enslaved in the United States. In America, they recognized the wild persimmon trees as something familiar. This connection allowed the enslaved not just a reminder of home, but an element of independence. In “Fighting Old Nep: Foodways of Enslaved Afro-Marylanders, 1634-1864,” Twitty wrote:
“When the “simmons,” (persimmons) were ripe and the frost and light snow had descended on the land the possums were considered to be at their fattest and most delicious. Typically they were caught with dogs, kept alive a week or two and fed cornbread and persimmons until it the cook felt that they were “cleaned out.” (Possums eat carrion in addition to fruits and nuts.)”
Twitty shared his family recipe for persimmon beer, describing its deep traditions and remarking that “it’s possible that the recipe that I cherish was brought from one of the many communities in West and Central Africa that harvest this tree every year, much as generations of enslaved Africans and African Americans did in America from the 17th century onward!”
Continue reading “Persimmon Pudding, Mrs. Isabel Atkinson Lieber”