Great quantities of dried fruit are exported from Ispahan, which is celebrated for its “keisi,” or dried apricots; these are merely the fallen fruit, which is either too much bruised for sale or has not found a market. They are simply placed in the sun, and become in a week dry, hard, and semi-transparent, thus forming a very portable food: the stones are of course removed and the fruit becomes as hard as horn; an hour’s soaking renders them fit to eat, or when stewed they are delicious, being so very sweet as to require no added sugar.
As a dessert fruit the Persians at times place an almond or a peeled walnut within the fruit where the stone has been; as it dries the nut becomes embedded, a sharp packing-needle and string is run through them when half dry, and they are sold thus, hung on strings like huge necklaces.
Enormous quantities of alū Bokhara, or acid plum, are sold; these, however, are not dried but half boiled, and poured into the skins of sheep, as bags, forming a kind of preserve; they are very appetising, being a very acid yet sweet fruit, and are eaten raw with mast (curdled milk), or are used as a sauce to stewed meat with rice.
Cherries, too, are dried in the sun in the same manner, the stones being extracted; also peaches.
Small melons, called germak and tellabi, now (May) make their appearance; these, though far superior to anything produced in England, are not thought much of. The big brown melon, or karbiza of Gourg-ab, which will keep good a year, and attains an enormous size—some being seventy and eighty pounds in weight—is the most highly prized; the flesh is white, and tastes like a Jersey pear. They grow on a salt soil, are heavily manured with pigeons’ dung, and freely irrigated till the plant flowers. Many choice varieties of melon abound, as the “Shah passand,” or king’s favourite, and others.
The “Hindiwana,” or water-melons, are of three kinds, the red-fleshed, the yellow-fleshed, and the white-fleshed: these run from three to twenty-eight pounds in weight, as an ordinary size; there are long and round descriptions. The skin varies from pale green to almost black with green blotches; the latter are the best.
Pumpkins also are common and of great size.
Cucumbers never grow long, but short and thick; they are called “keeal,” are very plentiful and delicious, and may, at the height of the season, be bought fourteen pounds for one shaie, or halfpenny. There is another fruit something between the melon and cucumber, a kind of eatable gourd, called the koompezeh; it has not much flavour, and is eaten with salt. The cucumbers form one of the staple foods of the people; they are eaten with salt, and are looked on as a fruit; the peasants eat at a sitting five or six pounds’ weight, and find no inconvenience; the Persian cucumber may be eaten with impunity.
Lettuces grow in vast profusion, also the kalam kūmri, a strongly-flavoured kind of nohl-kohl. The Aubergine, or “badinjan,” the fruit of which I have seen weighing three pounds, and carrots and turnips are also grown: the carrots are generally a green-rooted variety. Spinach, called “Ispinagh,” is a favourite vegetable. Kanga (or chardons), a kind of thistle, is brought from the mountains, and also Rivend, or wild rhubarb; both are good.
Potatoes are now much grown, but were hardly known on my first arrival in Persia. Kalam-i-Rūmi, or Turkish cabbage, is raised successfully and attains an enormous size, twenty-eight pounds being a common weight for a head; it is the perfection of cabbage, and nearly all heart. Parsnips are unknown.