TASTY RHUBARB
February is all about celebrating rhubarb, Yorkshire’s very own foodie superstar. Jacky Hobbs delves into the growing, cooking and history of the fabulous fruit
Rhubarb once had a life as a vegetable, but in 1947 it was officially recognised as a fruit. But still it wasn’t what you’d call sweet. So it had to be ‘forced’ to be sweet, resulting in rosy, tender, sweeter stems expertly honed by families of Yorkshire growers.
In its heyday, 1900s-1940s, a massive 30-square-mile rhubarb-growing hub developed bet ween Wakefield, Leeds and Bradford, a gargantuan rhubarb ‘patch’ affectionately known as ‘The Rhubarb Triangle’. This and the wider farming hinterland, comprised of claggy soils, cold, wet winters with the added advantage of the Pennine frost pocket, served outdoor growing of rhubarb perfectly well. In tandem with local sheep farming, the wool industry provided nitrogen rich waste, ‘shoddy’, the final requisite ingredient for successful growing.
Following the inadvertent discovery of ‘forced’ rhubarb, uncovered at the Chelsea Physic Garden in 1817, which renders earlier, sweeter-tasting and tender stems, legendary rhubarb forcing sheds sprung up in proximity to Yorkshire’s railways, some actually in disused railway sheds.
Warmed by a then cheap and plentiful supply of coal, Yorkshire’s rose-gold was grown undercover, secreted in darkness, plucked by candlelight (to preserve the desired red-pink stem colour and minimise leaf growth) and hundreds of thousands of stems raced from Yorkshire on a daily ‘Rhubarb Express’ to feed the greed of London’s Spitalfields and Covent Garden Markets.
Yorkshire grew the lion’s share of Britain’s rhubarb, developing earlier, later, sweeter, longer, more vigorous, redder, pinker, softer varieties to maintain advantage and momentum.
Disastrously for the industry, the war years brought rationing, and sugar became scarce, rendering the largely suck-sour fruit pretty unpalatable. A few entrepreneurial farmers grew sweet cicely, a natural sweetener, alongside the rhubarb, its slightly aniseed taste tempering or at best neutralising the sharpness. Without the luxury of sugar, rhubarb slipped from popularity as a new wave of exotic, imported fruits hit our shores.
Whilst forced rhubarb volumes today are massively reduced and many sheds, like fifth generation E. Oldroyd and Son Ltd. and Tomlinson’s double as historic tourist attractions, a sweet-tasting, reduced nine-square-mileslice of the pie remains. In 2010, rhubarb forced inside the Yorkshire Triangle, regardless of the variety, was awarded prestigious P.D.O. status, joining the esteemed likes of champagne and Parma ham, recognising that the taste cannot be replicated beyond the confines of the county.
HERITAGE HEROES
In celebration of Yorkshire’s rhubarb prowess, RHS Yorkshire Garden Harlow Carr has crea
