Strawberries and Cream: a Wimbledon tradition with a long history

With Wimbledon in full swing, thoughts – naturally – turn towards that perennial British summer favourite, fresh strawberries and cream. (Well, my thoughts do, anyway!)

Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (or rather, his cook!) is often credited with first serving this treat. Legend has it that the King and his entourage descended on Wolsey’s home, Hampton Court, and the harassed cook, in an inventive moment, decided to serve wild strawberries and cream as one of the desserts at the banquet. Perhaps he was running out of time to produce anything more complicated? Dairy produce was considered  ‘peasant food’ but, if the king ate it, then everyone else was going to as well. And so the combination gained popularity.

Strawberries and Cream by Raphaelle Peale, 1816, National Gallery of Art

A popular cookbook, Cookery reformed; or, The Lady’s assistant, 1755, had this advice:

There are two sorts of strawberries, those that grow in gardens, and those that will not. The garden strawberries are best, and most in esteem, of which some are red, and some are white. They should be chosen large, ripe, full of juice, with a fragrant smell, and a vinous taste. They are cooling, quench thirst, promote urine and take off the heat of the stomach. They may be eaten after dinner with cream, and sugar, or with wine, without any prejudice, avoiding excess. They are very useful in hot weather, especially to those of warm constitutions.

Three decades later, the Caledonian Mercury (19 June 1788) carried the following advert.

ARCHIBALD DICK informs his friends, and the public in general, that he continues as formerly to sell STRAWBERRIES and CREAM, at his house on Leith Walk, the first above the Botanic Garden. Besides the different apartments in the house, he has pitched two Marquees in his garden, for the better accommodation of company. Families in the New Town may be served with the above, at his Spirit Shop, west end of Register Street, where the fruit will arrive fresh from the garden three times every day, viz. at six o’clock in the morning, one o’clock in the afternoon, and seven in the evening. Other FRUITS likewise in their season.

There have been many (false!) tales told about the eighteenth-century courtesan, Kitty Fisher’s extravagance. For instance, the oft-repeated story that she ate a banknote. However, one tale has been overlooked. On a cold January day, at the height of her fame (c. 1759/1760), Kitty decided on a whim that she wanted a bowl of strawberries. Nothing else would satisfy her. At last, some were found in a gardener’s greenhouse but he could only make up a small basket. He wanted 30 guineas for around 40 strawberries, but Kitty insisted on having them. It is not known which of her lovers paid the bill but, as was pointed out at the time, 30 guineas would have bought a field large enough to grow strawberries for an entire city to eat!

A Lady in Full Dress, Seen from Behind by Samuel Scott. The Tate

The woman in the image above, who has just bought some strawberries from a street seller, is carrying them in a basket called a pottle. Up to around 50 or 60 pottles of strawberries would be carried by the seller in a large basket balanced on their head.

Strawberries – Brought fresh gathered to the markets in the height of their season, both morning and afternoon, they are sold in pottles containing something less than a quart each. The crier adds one penny to the price of the strawberries for the pottle which if returned by her customer, she abates. Great numbers of men and women are employed in crying strawberries during their season through the streets of London at sixpence per pottle.

In June 1813, Lady Smith Burges held a public breakfast on the terrace of her Piccadilly townhouse, resembling a fête champêtre. As the guests arrived, at the fashionably late hour (for a breakfast) of 3 p.m. and serenaded by Mr Gow’s Band, they were provided with delicacies laid out on various tables, all provided by the well-known Regency caterers, Gunters. Strawberry and cream ices were a highlight of the repast.

Frederick Nutt, formerly apprenticed to the confectioner Domenico Negri (who sold ice cream from his shop under the sign of The Pot and Pineapple in Berkeley Square from the 1760s), published a recipe book, The Complete Confectioner, in 1789. From that book, we have a recipe for strawberry ice cream which may be similar to that served by Gunters.

Strawberry Ice Cream: Take a large spoonful of strawberry jam, add a pint of cream and a little cochineal; put it into your freezing pot and cover it; put the freezing pot into a pail, and some ice all round the pot; throw a good deal of salt on the ice in the pail, turning the pot round for ten minutes, then open your pot, and scrape it from the sides, cover it up again, and keep turning it for some time, till your cream is like butter, and as thick; put it in your moulds, put them into a pail, and cover it with ice and salt for three quarters of an hour, till you find the water is come to the top of the pail; do not be sparing of salt, for if you do not use enough it will not freeze: dip your mould into water, and turn it out on your plate to send to table.

Sources not mentioned above:

Kitty Fisher: The First Female Celebrity by Joanne Major (Barnsley, Pen & Sword History, 2022

Morning Post, 24 June 1813

Itinerant Traders of London in their Ordinary Costume with Notices of Remarkable Places given in the Background, William Marshall Craig, 1804

This is an updated revision of my earlier blog on a former website.