They don’t have pepper with strawberries at Wimbledon anymore, but 28 tonnes of berries covered in 11,000 liters of cream will have been eaten by the end of the men’s final tomorrow.
Asked to rank the most popular items at the grass-court championship, Jonathan Parker, director of catering, said: “Strawberries by far, and second would be water and three would be Pimm’s” — the fruity British summer liqueur.
Thursday was the hottest day so far at the 13-day tournament and some of those lining up in the 28oC heat for the dish — that is almost as famous at Wimbledon as the tennis — cast longing glances toward the ice-cream stand.
Others, though, kept their eyes on the prize, among them American Sarah Kobrin from the Washington area who was visiting with her 16-year-old daughter Frances to recreate an experience she had had as a teenager with her mother at Wimbledon in 1980.
Kobrin said the trip 34 years ago was “wonderful and exciting” and that the strawberries, which come from nearby Kent, were “better than American strawberries because they don’t travel so far.”
They are “delightful,” Frances said after tasting a strawberry.
Strawberries have been exactly that, ever since at least the late 19th century when they were part of afternoon tea, said Honor Godfrey, curator of the Wimbledon Museum.
No one seems to know when strawberries started being served with cream.
“I’ve got actually no idea of that,” Godfrey said. “But I do know that when I came here in the ’70s you could get pepper on your strawberries, black pepper, because a lot of the Scandinavians had pepper with their strawberries, instead of sugar.”
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