Food and clothing names are one of the most confusing things across regions and countries that speak English. Mandarine is one of those fruits that seems to have a variety of names. Just now Wikipedia has cleared up some of those issues for me for the humble mandarine, as I knew it in Australia and mikan as I know the same fruit here in Japan. Other names are Mandarine orange, tangerine, clementine, and even mandarin (with no 'e').
According to Japan from A to Z by Vardaman and Vardaman:
Be sure to peel the fruit downward from the place where the stem was attached, parting the skin into four sections. Leave the bottom intact. That way you will have a receptacle for the parts that you leave uneaten. Remove one section and, holding the inner most edge, pull the meat out with your teeth. Place the remaining skin of the section back into the peel. After you have eaten the contents, you can pull the peel over the top so that the remains will not be visible.The story they tell to support the seriousness of this method is a discussion after an o-miai, a formal meeting where prospective marriage partners are introduced. The story goes that the young man is very attracted to the lady, but his mum is against it. When asked why, she said, "Because of the way she peeled her mikan."
Wow! Good thing my husband's mum didn't have such a criteria. He would never have married me - can you see what a terrible job I did of my mandarine at lunch time? And why would I bother discarding the casing of the segments, it was so tender, I hardly had to chew!
Japanese have other interesting correct methods related to fruit. The two that come to mind are that you must peel and apple before eating and you never eat the skin of a grape.
Interesting!? Just on the range of names that they seem to have...growing up, I knew them as mandarines, but my husband calls them mandarins and I think the major supermarkets do too...so I have now started calling them mandarins as well.
ReplyDeleteSo what happens with grapes? Peeled before eating or discreetly spitting out the skin later?
I think you kind of squirt it into your mouth, leaving the skin behind. Japanese seedless grapes are small and the flesh isn't well attached to the skin.
ReplyDeleteWe only knew tangerines when I was a kid in the 1960s, but now in England they are called satsumas! Or if they're tinned, mandarin oranges.
ReplyDeleteWikipedia says this about Satsumas:
ReplyDeleteSatsuma, a seedless variety, of which there are over 200 cultivars, such as Owari and mikan; the source of most canned mandarins, and growing in popularity as a fresh fruit in the US for its ease of consumption.
So presumably mikan is a variety of Satsuma.