Mebos musings

On one of my recent visits to Atlas Trading in the Bo-Kaap, Cape Town, a sign for Mecca Mebos on one of the shelves caught my attention. For me, Mebos is synonymous with the Cape and its dried fruit culture. On closer inspection the packet read, “Dried Apricot Paste”. The ingredients indicated on the pack included apricots, sugar, and olive oil. I was not sure why it was described as mebos, because it was not mebos as I know it.

Mebos is made from dried apricots that are pulped and flavoured with sugar and salt. Once flavoured, the apricot pulp is shaped into circles or sticks. Mebos is an acquired taste for most people. The pressed salty sun-dried apricots cover a whole flavour spectrum from salty, sour, and sweet with the unmistakable flavour of apricot. Personally, I prefer the mebos wheels without the sugar.

Dried fruit producers offer mebos in different forms. These vary from the round disks, sticks, flakes, slices, to squares. Normally they are natural flavoured or sugared. The sugar tends to disguise the salty sour taste of the mebos. For me, it is a way of sweetening the experience to capture a broader audience.   

What tempted me in Atlas Trading, was a small jar of mebos dip. It turned out to be a versatile dip. It had the flavour of mebos but with a spicy edge. I found the dip great for snacks and I prefer it to sweet chilli sauce.  One can even use it in a marinade for a leg of pork or a roast chicken.

The name mebos is said to originate from the Japanese word umeboshi and comes from the Prunus Mume, known in Japanese as “ume”. The Prunus Mume is often translated as “Asian plum”, but this fruit is closely related to the apricot. Umeboshi is a brined, fermented sun-dried Asian plum/apricot.

During his travels at the Cape of Good Hope from 1772 to 1775, Carl Peter Thurnberg encountered mebos and compared it with the practice of drying fruit in Japan. In 1862 Lady Duff-Gordon in her letters from the Cape recorded buying mebos. On 15 April 1862 she writes, “I have bought some Cape confeyt’; apricots, salted and then sugared, called ‘mebos’—delicious! Also pickled peaches, ‘chistnee’, and quince jelly.” I can agree with Lady Duff-Gordon. I am sure it was as delicious then as it is now.

In “The story of an African Farm”, written by Olive Schreiner under the pseudonym Ralph Iron and published in 1883, Bonaparte Blenkins, the confidence trickster in the story, illustrated what a liar is by telling the story of a boy from Short Market Street, Cape Town. The boy was sent to buy meiboss (mebos). The boy came back concealing from his mother how many pieces he had bought.

“ “Here, Sampson,” said his mother, “go and buy sixpence of meiboss from the Malay round the corner.”

“When he came back she said: “How much have you got?”

“Five,” he said.

He was afraid if he said six and a half she’d ask for some. And, my friends, that was a lie. The half of a meiboss stuck in his throat and he died and was buried. And where did the soul of that little liar go to, my friends? It went to the lake of fire and brimstone.” “

In the cookbook by Hildagonda J Duckitt, Hilda’s where is it of recipes, first published in 1891, I found the earliest recipe for the making of mebos.

Hildagonda Duckitt's recipe for Mebos

In his book Social Life in Cape Colony in the Eighteenth Century, published in 1926, Colin Graham Botha writes the following, “Apricots were dried and made into “mebos”, no doubt an art learnt from the East, …”

In “In Search of South Africa”, published in 1948, H. V. Morton writes, ”Mebos is not common. Here again we have something that came to the Cape from the Far East. Some believe that the word is derived from the Arabic mushmush, an apricot, but others, and this is more likely, from umeboshi, a Japanese word given to preserved plums. Mebos is made of ripe apricots, dried, salted, and sugared, and the taste is an acquired one, for it belongs definitely to that “sweet and sour” order so palatable to the Chinese. People brought up in China tell me that plums salted and sugared like mebos are still popular there, and it is fairly certain that this unusual sweetmeat came to South Africa in early times by way of the Dutch East India Company’s factories in China and Japan.”

In the Afrikaans folksong “Daar kom Tant Alie” Aunt Miena is cooking syrup from the mebos jam.

“Daar kom tant Alie, tant Alie, tant Alie,
daar kom tant Alie, tant Alie om die draai.

En tant Miena kook stroop van die mebos-konfyt,
van die Wellingtonse suiker teen ‘n trippens die pond,
en tant Miena kook stroop van die mebos-konfyt,
van die Wellingtonse suiker teen ‘n trippens die pond.”

Mebos made from dried apricots are a true Cape tradition. It is well recorded in historical travel writing, popular fiction, folk songs, and historical cookbooks. For the established lover of mebos it will always be a delight.

Apricot blossoms in the orchard

To lure a new and young audience to the taste of mebos, a beverage company on the West Coast of the Western Cape is producing a naturally fermented, preservative free, low sugar, gently sparkling mebos drink. If you are that way inclined, you can inhale mebos vape fluid made by a company in Wellington, South Africa.

I might be tempted to try the mebos drink, but I will pass on the vape fluid. Buying the mebos dip has inspired me to explore the culinary possibilities of mebos, but I am quite happy to sit back and enjoy this tangy salted snack just as it is.

 

Sources:

Letters from the Cape (1861-62), Lady Duff-Gordon, Published 1925

The story of an African Farm, Olive Schreiner, Published 1883 

Hilda’s where is it of recipes, Hildagonda Duckitt, First Published 1891   

Social Life at the Cape, C.G. Botha, Published 1926

In Search of South Africa, H.V.Morton, Published 1948

Finding Peace in the garden

We find comfort in stability and reliability. It is a joy to know that one can rely on a business that one has supported for the last 30 years, to be in the same spot delivering the same quality service without fail. When we decided to replace nearly a third of the rose bushes in the rosarium, it was good to know that we would be able to buy some of the new roses from the same nursery that supplied the original roses for the new rosarium at Towerwater 28 years ago.

The rosarium being restored

As it happens, when I started cleaning out the loft a while back, I came across a bilingual catalogue of the same nursery dating from 1953. We had initially found the catalogue amongst many other things, in the loft when we bought the property in 1991. We decided to keep it with some other historical documents and records we discovered when we began cleaning before undertaking the renovations.

Ashton Nursery as it looks today

S.F Conradie began his nurseries in 1923. In the 1940’s, S.F. Conradie and his son T.V. Conradie together started the nursery called S.F. Conradie & Son, in Ashton. S.F. Conradie & Son later became Ashton Nurseries (Pty) Ltd.

The biographies of S.F. and T.V. Conradie as published in the 1953 catalogue

The catalogue introduces the business as follows, “We are Registered Nurserymen in Fruit Trees, Rose Trees and Vines, also Merchants in Government tested Vegetable Seeds and Flower Seeds”.

The catalogue contains extensive lists of 14 types of fruit trees, each with its own list of cultivars. They had nine vine cultivars and 100 different rose plants. Inside the printed catalogue I found a hand typed list of additions to the roses, fruit trees and vines for 1953.

It was interesting to note that of the 100 different roses, plus the 10 additional on the typed list for 1953, only one rose survived onto the current list. That is Peace, a rose with the following description in the catalogue: “Peace – You can expect some of the most spectacular roses ever seen in your garden. Flowers are delicately coloured in tones of gold, white and apple-blossom. The world’s favourite.”

The previous owner and sons posing next to a rose bush in the front garden

Interesting how the rose growing culture has changed in 68 years. I understand that rose propagators are constantly trying to cultivate stronger, more floriferous, fragrant and disease resistant roses. These roses inevitably become more popular. Although the favourites of 1953 might still be available somewhere, mostly in Europe, it does make better business sense to grow and stock the hardier ones.

The rosebush, possibly "Peace" a favourite prop in photos

In some of the old black and white photographs we found on the loft, were photographs taken of the family in the garden among their roses. The rose bushes were probably bought from Ashton Nursery around 1953. The tall light rose in many of the photographs looks to me like Peace. If one could colourise these photographs I am sure it would turn out to be the Peace rose.

It is warming to support a family business that has been around for the best part of a century. As we planted the Peace rose that we bought from Ashton Nursery this year, we realised that there must have been a Peace rose growing in the Towerwater garden since it first became available to rose growers after the second World War in 1945.

Restoring the rosarium

More posts featuring the rosarium in flower:

A posse ad esse - “from possibility to actuality."

The hundred petaled rose

In Chloris’s footsteps

Roses in October

The Spring Flush of the Rosarium

Restoring the rosarium

This year, we replaced 33 rose bushes in the rosarium. In 28 years of the rosarium’s existence, it is the largest replanting undertaken in a single year. This bold move was made possible by my research into the best approach for introducing new roses into an existing rosarium.

Replacement roses marked with poles

I grew up with the received wisdom that a new rose bush is never planted in the same soil where one has previously grown. The understanding is that the bushes would be susceptible to ‘rose replant disease’. We used to replace the soil for every new rose bush that we introduced into the rosarium. This meant that we would laboriously dig out the soil and replace it with fresh soil from another part of the garden. We also took the secondary precautionary measure of lining the hole where the new rose was being planted with cardboard before introducing the new soil to the hole.

Replacing soil somehow always resulted in spare bags of soil after the swopping exercise. It remains a mystery to me as to why one always had more bags come out of a hole than one is able to put back.

The spare bags of soil came in handy over the years though. We used them as top dressing for the lawn. After scarifying the lawn, we would also level any hollows in the lawn with the excess soil.

I decided that I needed to obtain clarity about this labour-intensive practice of replacing soil if one needs to plant new roses. Asking Google, “Why does one have to replace the soil in an existing rose bed for new roses?”, a search result returned that may change our approach to future rose gardening.

The first result was very interesting. It explained that the replacing of the soil should not be necessary if one removes all the old roots, introduce lots of garden compost and treats the roots of the new rose with Mycorrhizal fungi. Mycorrhizal fungi?

Apparently, Mycorrhizal fungi have a symbiotic relationship with plants. What they do is that they help the plants take up water and nutrients. At the same time, they act as a buffer against certain harmful microbes and pathogens that may have been left behind by the roses bushes that were there before.

All the holes dug and ready for planting

The good news was that if we introduce mycorrhizal fungi, there would be no need to replace the old soil. I immediately started researching Mycorrhizal fungi and was amazed by my findings. A network of fungal threads forms an association with the roots of the rose bushes. Becoming, in the process, an extension to their root system.

In a symbiotic relationship the fungus collects sugars from the plant while helping the plant absorb water and nutrients more efficiently. In this way enhanced growth and overall health of the plant is facilitated.

I shared the information with Keith, who agreed that this sounded like the solution for which we had been looking.

I discovered that in recent years, dried granules of mycorrhizal fungi have been widely used as an aid which helps rose bushes overcome ‘rose replant disease’. Some leading European rose nurseries even sell branded mycorrhizal fungi.

My next problem was where to find a supplier? The local manufacturer in Grahamstown had a very informative website but my email correspondence with them remained unanswered. I tried to contact an online retailer with offices in Cape Town through their website and email, but these also remained unanswered.

Determined to find this product, I at last found a retailer located in Somerset West that had stock. When Keith had to go to Cape Town, he picked up our order of 5kg of the granules on his return route to Towerwater.

Encouraged by our new solution to our rose replacing exercise, we were emboldened in our decision of selecting which rose bushes to replace this year. We ended up marking 33 roses for replacement. Some of them were of the original planting 28 years ago. Some were no longer performing making certain colourscapes appear moth-eaten. Others we were keen to replace simply had not performed as we had hoped.

New roses at Ashton Nursery

To find 33 different rose varieties was the next challenge. Our rosarium is after all comprised of a collection of 120 different varieties of rosebushes. Our first choice, Ashton Nursery, who had supplied the roses for the original planting, has scaled down the rose selection of the nursery. Their focus is currently on fruit tree production. I bought as many of the rose varieties as they had in stock that met our criteria, particularly in terms of height, growth pattern and colour. The bulk of the rose plants, Keith collected from the Tulbagh Nursery.

New roses waiting to be planted

With all the young rose plants on site, the planting could begin. With fresh compost from our own compost bins and the mycorrhizal fungi granules, the roses were put to bed.

All the roses restored in the rosarium

With our newfound garden vocabulary and learning of the microbiome of plants and more of the microbial communities and networks in the soil, we eagerly await the results of our latest gardening endeavour.   

More adventures with roots and fungi - Misty mornings and mushrooms