Gastronomic Geography of Chile

Photo of Oreste Plath by Juan Domingo Marinello

Oreste Plath (1907-1996), born Octavio Müller Leiva, was a Chilean folklorist, poet and author of more that 40 books.  Among his exhaustive studies of folklore and popular culture, he wrote several “Geographies,” ..of Chilean Myth and Legend, …of  Chilean Religion, and of Chilean Gastronomy.[1]  The latter, translated below, is among the best overviews of Chilean cuisine, and answers the questions “What do Chileans eat?” and “What is Chilean Food?” in a way no foreigner can.

Oreste’s Spanish is lush and poetic; my translation is neither, but I have tried to convey as much of his style as I could. The original, an article in The Trip, Magazine of the State Railroads[2] can be found at Memoria Chilean.  Your suggestions on improving (or correcting) my translation are welcome.

“I have been in the depths and heights or this land

And have tried to interpret the country’s soul and landscape.”

Oreste Plath

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Gastronomic Geography of Chile

by Oreste Plath, 1962

Following the physical geography of Chile from north to south, one develops a gastronomic knowledge of the food not served in fashionable restaurants nor found on hotel menus, but in humble businesses, on the simple tables of the city and the countryside. Every town contributes its foods as part of the dietary atlas.  Every region owns a style and a taste.

Geography and History

In Chile the varied geography combines with the realities of production and history:  indigenous diets, foods brought by the invading Inca, and the contributions of the Spanish conqueror, shape the triple fusion that is the Chilean cuisine.

Customs and Festivals Related to Food

There are Chilean food customs determined by summer and winter and foods associated with religious and profane holidays, such as the food of Fridays, of Holy Week, of the supper of St. John (June 24, with St. John’s stew[3]); of the fiesta of the Cross of May (May 3 to 30); of the food of the dead (November 2); and of hot toddies served at wakes, to comfort and to combat the cold of dawn.  Holiday foods are prepared for Christmas, New Year, national holidays, trips to the country, saints’ days or birthdays, weddings, and baptisms.   And for threshings, potato diggings, grape harvests, rodeos, shearings, working parties, or celebrations for setting house beams.

Seafood

Some regions are known for their fish and seafood, others for vegetables, or for meats and sausages, wines and ciders, sweets and fruits. Chile is blessed with a sea that offers more that two hundred eatable species within its tripartite divisions:  From Iquique to Coquimbo, the sea’s bounty is rich; from Tongoy to Constitución, less rich; and from Talcahuano to Chiloé and the southern archipelago, very rich. There are ruff, swordfish, grunts, bonito, tuna, sardines, anchovies, croakers, conger eels, flounder, mackerel, jerguilla, snoek, dogfish, sand perch, mullet, rock bass, silversides, hake, cod, eel or sea snake, blennies, elephant fish, sheepsheads, pampinito, brick sea bass, breca and octopus.

For shellfish the zones are Antotagasta, Talcahano, Puerto Montt, Chiloé, Aisén and the Magallanes, [Chile’s far south] which provide blue mussels, abalones, beach clams, sea squirts, razor clams, ribbed mussels, crabs, scallops, sea urchins, crayfish, and those Juan Fernandez lobsters that fly all over the Americas integrating themselves into the menus of grand banquets; and there is the oyster, the finest and most valuable of Chilean mollusks, said by followers domestic and foreign, to be one of the world’s best; and more, there are spider crabs; and all along the coast are eatable seaweeds, laver, and bull kelp, an algae that is one of the globe’s largest plants, whose fleshy root is eaten in salads. And there are sperm whales, humpbacked and blue, pursued all over the seas for their tasty filets.

Chilean wines

And then there are the wines, the Chilean’s second blood, those grape musts, those broths that enhance conviviality, that can be loose, sold from the barrel; or in bottles with labels bearing names of saints like San Jorge, San Pedro, San Carlos, Don Bosoc; and of female saints like Santa Carolina, Santa Lucía, Santa Rosa, Santa Rita, Santa Matilde, Santa Enmiliana, Santa Filomena, Santa Elena, and following the calendar of saints’ days and the mystical, are the mellow names of the Spaniards, Basques, and French;  of Cousiño, Errázuriz, Urmenta, Undurraga, Tocornal and Ochagavía.  

Wine is not ignored in summer, but is accompanied by minced fruit, ice, and sugar to make Borgioñia, wine and fruit punch, and wine with strawberries.  And when the wine must be replaced by grape juice, by poor wine from clay jugs, or by cider pressed from grapes, toasted flour is added to give it more consistency, more body; a mixture that changes its name with the length of the country calling itself “pihueloI,” ”chupilcda,” or “chicha with arithmetic.”

Sweets made by the hands of nuns

Alfajores

Candy and pastry making, a Spanish inheritance that arrived in Chile through the conquistadors and was spread through the convents, the nuns. Spanish religious women made the most delicate preserves such as fruits and flowers of sugar paste, icings or marzipan, nougats, and dulce de leche.  Indian Sisters, from within and outside of convents, made sweets the Chileans call by Arab and Hispanic names: alfajor, alfeñique, almendrados, roscas, coronillas, cajetillas and merenges.

And they were the grandmothers of the townswomen who sweetened Chilean’s lives and who gave birth to the towns of sweet lineage like La Serena, with its fruit preserves; Elqui and Vicuña with their sugar paste candies or peach pulps; La Ligua with its candies known as liguanos; Melipilla and Curacaví with their meringues, Curicó with its cakes; Constitución with its sweets called Margaritas; and Chillán with its sweetened poultry “substance” called “Substance of Chillán.”[4] 

Fresh and Exquisite Fruits 

In this delightful appetizing geography are fruits, beginning in the extreme north with the subtropical fragrance and taste of mangos, passion fruit, sugar cane, guavas, pineapples, pacayes, pepinos, bananas, an astonishingly juicy and exquisite small lime [key lime], and cantaloupes.

Photo Lúcuma

In the “Little North” figs appear, along with cherimoyas, the fragrant Chilean papaya, and the lúcuma.  And then comes the “Central Zone” with its dialog of leaf and fruit whose vines span half of Chile, the great variety of peaches, nectarines, the dented peaches, the yellow and Virgin aurimelos; the apples that seem torn from oil paintings, the huge quinces, the pears: Lloicas, Luisas, water pears, Christmas and Easter pears; apricot plums, Purísimas and Claudias; the dove heart cherries; the red and white strawberries; the melons, cactus fruits, moscateles, flaming red watermelons, oranges, and following the pomegranates, a white fig and a black one, fit for the best table or for an exposition.

Taste of the Big North[5] 

The provincial tastes begin in the Big North and where the strong and spicy flavors found in Peru and Bolivia continue: salted beef; chalón or salón, salted or frozen lamb for the northern cazuela; llama filets, guanaco roasts, ceviche like in Peru; stuffed sea urchins; perol de locos [abalone ceviche], rabbit or octopus or shrimp picante [in a cheese and chili sauce], and conger chupín [stew with tomatoes].

The fruits are tested by the burning sun and taste of the tropics, and the wine seems hidden in the canyons and little valleys.

Taste of the Little North 

In the provinces of the Little North green fruit trees emerge from among the rocks, the mines.  And the sun’s conquest begins, making fresh fruits dry, like raisins from white grapes and dry peaches stripped of their seeds; and the preserved fruit, its juice turned to honey.  And their wines, that are like the Lord’s tears, and the pisco, a drink like aguardiente [6], with a very pleasing taste.  And the shellfish here deliver a delicious meal of seafood.

Taste of the Islands

There are insular foods and there are food filled islands like the Juan Fernandez’s with their lobster. And if fish or shellfish become tiring, there are doves marinated in oil, vinegar and spices, or however you would want them; and kid goat roasts are part of the islander’s diet. 

And the most isolated food of any island is that of Rapoa Nui or Easter Island, astounding the scientific world, whose island food style is Polynesian cooking with hot stones.  And there are fish and shellfish that taste nothing like those here. One eats a long rough potato; an exquisite sweet potato, a cooked banana.  Bananas are fruit, stew and bread and at the side are pineapples, figs, plums, and peanuts.

Taste of the Central Zone 

The provinces that make up the Central Zone are the essence of nature, the heart of Chile where one eats empanadas [turnovers] made with air dried pino or picadillo [hash] and baked in an adobe oven fueled with hard mesquite-like wood; the chicken cazuela with oregano, the pastel de choclo in its clay bowl, the humita [tamale], or rather the “umita” of the Quechuas, smelling of basil; the puchero, essence of the Spanish stew, served with various salads; the pancutras or pantrucas and resbalosas, hojitas de alamo, and panchitas [types of dumplings], throw-me-ins for the pot of jerky or crackling meatballs, and always broken eggs; beans with pumpkin; beans with corn or wheat hominy, or with cracklings, bacon or chuchoca, yellow corn meal often served with potatoes that multiplies in flavor when added to a turkey or pork cazuela; and the various locros based on corn; ajíaco, a soup of fried meat, onions, eggs, potatoes and chili; valdiviano, a dish born in Valdivia.  It contains roasted jerky pounded into bits, onions, eggs, potatoes, spices and the essential chili.  These are the vegetable medleys that the conquistador and founder of our cities, Don Pedro de Valdivia, ordered as wages for his soldiers stationed in this region.  And with these ingredients the retched soldiers made this soup that took the name Valdivia and so remained bundled into the history of Chilean food.

charquicán

Here the stews, common among the Quechuas and Araucanians, that end in “--can” originated: tomaticán, minced corn, crushed tomatoes, fried meat, minced onion and chili; charquicán, a mash of vegetables, corn, ground or pounded jerky, served with a rain of parsley and accompanied by a beef rib, or if you prefer, with pickled onions; the luchicán, potatoes with seaweed and fried onion; sangricán blood with potatoes and fried onion; and chercán, with a base of toasted wheat flour.

The dishes based on the outsides and insides of animal are abundant:   chanfaina, stew of sheep offal; wrapped malotillas [?], chunchules, fried or grilled beef or mutton intestines; testicles in soups or fried; trunk [?] soup; pork ribs or prepared as an arrollado [filled meat roll]; various blood sausages served with rice or mashed potatoes; pork hocks colored with chili sauce; pork headcheese, meat and tongue seasoned, pressed and molded. 

And the pebre or the pebres, those sauces that condiment and add flavor; minces of cilantro, garlic, chili, and seasonings, or the one with tomatoes, garlic, and chili called chancho en piedra [pig in stone], because it is ground in a stone mortar and for the light taste pork it takes when dressed with it. 

In winter there are sopapillas [fritters] and doughnuts in honey or chancaca [brown sugar loaf] syrup that temper the southern days.

In the summer it is mote con husillos [peaches stewed with wheat] that is the drink and sweet with the spirit of Chile, about which they say “More Chilean than mote con huesillos,” although the Araucanians [Mapuche] adopted the word mote, cooked corn or wheat, from the Quechua.

Taste of the Araucaria

And in the south are various provinces in the where the indigenous reservations are found, remains of the Araucarian people who conserve their food traditions, a different Chilean cuisine, with blood dishes like ñachi and apol; with dishes of wheat and corn; of horse meat, of a solidified chili paste called merquén, and of corn beer, muday.

European Taste

European cuisine, via the German settlers who colonized the south and brought German cuisine with hams and sausages that rival the best in the world, pork hocks served with sauerkraut, and Valdivia beer.  They like apple tarts called kuchen and many wild fruit jams and a delicious apple cider that tastes like Champaign.

Taste of the Austral South

Next come the provinces of the Austral south where fish and shellfish have their greatest representation. The oyster appears, and this is the land where the potato is native.  These are the dominions of the oyster and the potato. 

Curanto at Cabulcano, Chiloe

The amazement of the Chilean and the foreigner begin with curanto, opulent cooking with rare flavor, made for strong palates. A banquet cooked in a hole in the earth because its contents would never fit in a pot and that is not served on a plate.  Curanto is a burial, over hot rocks, of shellfish, fish, pork, chicken, sausages and vegetables. It is a gastronomic backfill that when uncovered delights the eye and the palate. And there is the pulmay, a pot of shellfish cooked in their own juices; the cazuela of Chiloe made of shellfish instead of meat; the roast sierra [fish]; the Chiloe chorizos [spicy sausages] that are the best reward; for good reason they say “Well done, deserves chorizos.”

And in the manner of bread, strange bread, are trapaleles, mella, and catutos [steamed potato or wheat doughs].

The final province closing southern Chile is the Magallanes [lands of Magellan] where sheep raised for wool provide an abundance of mutton and lamb. Young sucking lamb of no more that four pounds is the best regional roast, and lamb surrenders its blood for blood sausages filled with vegetables; and its innards for soups.  And there are the products of the sea, fish along with mussels, little sea urchins and spider [king] crabs. The food varies in relation to the urban population and the workers of the sheep ranches, where they serve two breakfasts, the second of chops fried with eggs. 

The pioneers of the region, the Yugoslavs, and the nearby Argentineans have established other culinary novelties. The Yugoslav community, with its typical foods: Yugoslav stew, their cabbage dishes, their sweet cakes, the porsuratas [?], and their povetiza [pastry roll].  And the gnocchi and pastas reminiscent of Italian cooking from the nearby border with Yugoslavia.  The Argentinean influence is in the open air barbeques; combinations of spicy sausages, pieces of pork, lamb, beef, wieners, kidneys and liver.

As a fruit pleasure appear strawberries, red currants, raspberries; and among the wild fruits are the murtilla, the chura and the calafate, whose berries are made into jams and jellies.  

Taste of Chile

This trip bringing together culinary peculiarities as well as the national taste, does not include all the dishes or tastes of Chile.  On this table, whose foods may excel but cannot be compared, the tablecloth lacks many dishes remembered and known, but what can not be left out is the affection that the people have for their cooking, the cordiality that is established by eating in common and expressed by the saying “welcome to your house, with pebre by the spoonful;” by curanto, where the meal companions gather in a circle increasing the companionship around the cooking pit, the endless table; by the spit roasted mutton, which requires only the desire to eat and a knife; by the mate cup, which is passed from mouth to mouth; by the horn or glass of wine that establishes a family unity among the recently arrived or strangers; by cachada, the collective giant glass that is conviviality and solidarity.

And the Chilean doesn’t get on the train without his package or basket that holds his snack, perhaps of Peruvian potato salad or of cocaví [Quechuan for travel food], perhaps a ration of coca leaf that the Bolivian or Peruvian Indians carry on their trips. Causeo [Ayamara for travel food] or cocaví may be a tied chicken, some hard boiled eggs, pickled onions, olives, some green chilies, and without fail wine, and although it may be jug wine it should always be pure, vino moro [Moorish wine] not “baptized” with water.

And of this cocaví the seat companions ate. Unimportant that it was offered, enough that the train had shared.

O. P.

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[1] Oreste Plath (1907-1996) – Pesentación. Memoria Chilena. On line at http://www.memoriachilena.cl/temas/index.asp?id_ut=oresteplath(1907-1996)

[2] En viaje / Empresa de los Ferrocarriles del Estado. Santiago : La Empresa, 1933-1973. v., año XXIX, n° 343, (mayo 1962), p. 181–184 on line at http://www.memoriachilena.cl/archivos2/pdfs/MC0023119.pdf

[3] Beef, smoked pork, sausages, chicken, pork skin, onions, pepper and cumin, layered and marinated over night and then simmered in white wine.

[4] “Among the recipes of Chillan that have had national or International impact is ‘Substancia,’ a candy that adds to the vegetable sweetness the delicious flavor of chicken and of and beef bones rich in softened gelatins “  Typical foods,  Ilustre Municipio de Chillán,  on line at http://www.municipalidadchillan.cl/?modname=contenidos&id=210

[5] El Norte Grande, the Big North is Chile north of the Copiapó River (roughly half way between Antofagasta and Huasco on the map) including the Atacama Desert; El Norte Chico, “The Little North” is less arid and includes river irrigated valleys from the Copiapó south to Aconcagua, between Tongoy and Valparaiso on the map; El Centgro is Chile’s Mediterranean heartland from North of Valparaiso to approximately Constitutión and including Santiago; El Sur, The South, is the Araucaria, beginning at approximately Concepción and extending to the southern end of Chile Island, land of abundant rainfall and temperate forests; and the Austral South is Chile south of Chiloe.

[6] Pisco and aguardiente are brandy, distilled from grapes.

Chilean Palm Syrup/Miel de Palma

Among those UFOs (unidentified food objects) on Chilean supermarket shelves, one that aroused my curiosity early was miel de palma, literally “palm honey,” in its odd little plastic bottle. Since American style pancakes with (imitation) maple syrup had been a family hit, I had been buying expensive mediocre imported pancake syrup when I found it… which wasn’t all that often.

So I bought some. It’s really good; golden brown, thinner than honey, and with a flavor reminiscent of molasses, but milder. And that was the end of imitation maple syrup for this household.But of course, I had to find out more about it.

I quickly discovered that it comes from the Chilean wine palm or coquito palm (Jubaea chilensis, palma Chilena in Spanish), a native Chilean species and the among largest of the world’s palms with trunks reaching 5 feet in diameter and heights of up to 100 feet.[1]

The palm is native to central Chile, from the coast to elevations of 1,500 meters.  In The Chilean Palm, architect and palm aficionado, Pastor Correa Prats writes:

At the arrival of the Spanish, in the 16^th century, [the Chilean palm] ….was widely dispersed throughout the entire central zone, forming great forests, tens of millions of palms between Coquimbo and Colchagua. In the 17^th century Father Alfonso Ovalle described it in his Historical Account of the Kingdom of Chile (Histórica Relación del Reino de Chile): “these palms usually grow in mountains and canyons so steep, that seeing them for afar they seem to have been placed by hand.  They are very thick and tall.  The entire trunk is bare up to the fronds; such is its nature, that as it dresses itself with new fronds it is divesting itself of the old ones.”[2] (All translations mine unless otherwise noted.)

To the Mapuche, native people of central Chile, the palm (lilla or llillaI) was an important resource. Its fronds were used for constructing shelters and its fruit and nut, cau cau, (Sp. coquito, “little coconut”) was eaten. The tree itself was felled in the spring for the tender new fronds developing in the crown, which were eaten boiled, and “upon cutting, there is an abundant sugary liquid, which when boiled, becomes a delicious honey, similar to that of sugar cane; but as this operation inevitably causes the death of the tree, it is only done when the tree no longer has greater utility as a producer of cocos”[3]  And when “the palm sap was left to ferment, it made “a strong intoxicating drink” called guarango or “water of life,” hence the English name “wine palm.”[4]

In the 1820s English visitor Maria Graham described the tree:

The palm differs considerably from any I have seen in any part of the world.  The height of those I have seen when full-grown is from fifty to sixty feet; at about two-thirds of that height the stems narrow considerably.  The bark is composed of circular rings, knotty and brown; they are always upright, and exceed in circumference all the palms I know, except the dragon tree: the spathe containing the flower is so large, that the peasants use it to hold various domestic articles; and it is shaped so exactly like the canoes of the coast that I think it must have served as the model for building them.  …[It produces] a nut of the shape of a hazel, but much larger; the kernel is like a cocoa-nut, and like it, when young contains milk. This tree, when it is old, that is when the people calculate that it may have seen a hundred and fifty years pass by, is cut down; and, by the application of fire, a thick rich juice distills from it, called here miel, or honey. The taste is between that of honey and the finest molasses. The quantity yielded by each tree sells for 200 [ca. $3000, 2005] dollars. [5]

  

Maria Graham’s sketch of the Chilean Palm

Unfortunately, the Spanish enthusiasm for miel de palma led to overexploitation, reducing the millions of trees to three major stands, with a population of about 100,000.  These stands are now protected, but in one the company Cocalán is allowed to harvest limited numbers of old trees for syrup production, followed by reforestation. Reforestation is also the goal of the Foundation for the Recuperation and Promotion of the Chilean Palm.

The basic process involves felling the palm (by cutting according to some sources, uprooting according to others) so that it falls with the crown down hill, then removing the fronds and cutting ”a razor thin slice at the apex.”  The sap drips from the cut into collectors.  To maintain sap flow, a new cut is made daily, for six to eight months or more, during which 400 to 600 liters of sap are collected. [6] The sap is then boiled down and mixed with coconut juice (jugo de coco) and corn or cane sugar according to a recipe that is about 100 years old.

An explanation of the current harvesting and replanting process is provided by José Luis Angulo in his The Chilean Palm: Interesting Renewable Natural Resource.

The production of palm syrup is long and laborious, uniting the work of nature with that of many Chileans and the passage of time, essential for the aging that produces the flavor and color known to many generations of Chileans.  The extraction of the palm sap, basis for the production of palm syrup, is a traditional activity that has been maintained intact for more than 200 years.  For this reason, within its range, the Chilean palm has occupied and occupies a very significant role in our rural culture.

 The work begins with a team of forestry engineers who develop a cautious management plan, a plan that is submitted to the National Forestry Corporation (CONAF) of the Agricultural and Livestock Service (SAG).  Once the management plan has been approved, trails and roads are opened, an activity center is set up, and the marking of syrup palms begins, under the supervision of officers of CONAF.  Shortly thereafter (August) begins the uprooting [cutting?] of the marked palms.   As each palm is overturned all its fronds are removed and the area is left open for reforestation.

 The extraction itself begins in November and ends in April, allowing the hibernation [?] of the harvested palm and leaving space for the seeding and planting of new palms.  The following November the extraction of the sap begins again, and is completed between February and March.

 The collected palm sap is placed in barrels to be taken to the storehouse where it will rest for several years, until it achieves the aging necessary to turn it into the raw material for the production of Chilean palm syrup.

 Based on information now available [1985], in the last 20 years in the Hacianda Las Palmas de Cocalán, 15 new palms exist for each one harvested, a number which has increased in the last five years to 36 new palms for each palm harvested, considering only the reforestation undertaken according to the management plan and not including natural regeneration.[7]

The palm fruit (right) is also eatable, although it is unlikely to be found far from the tree, but the nuts, coquitos (called coco palma below),  are widely available in tostadurias and even in supermarkets.

Photo Patricio Novoa

They are like miniature coconuts. They have a hard outer shell and the meat inside tastes almost exactly like that of its larger cousin.  It is widely used in candy and cookies, and can be eaten out of hand, like other nuts. Coquitos are even by available by mail order in the US.

But for those outside of Chile, it is the palm itself, rather than its products that you are most likely to encounter.  It is a handsome tree, and since it grows at elevations up to almost 5,000 feet in the Andes, it can withstand colder climates than most palms.  The photo below is at Mission Bay in San Diego, California, but they are grown as far north as the US Pacific North west and London. (See Urbatorium by Chilean blogger Criss Salazar for an extensive discussion of the Chilean Palm with lots of photographs of palms in parks and gardens.)

Photo Geography lists

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[1].Rundel Philip W.  2002. The Chilean wine palm.  Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden Newsletter 5(4) on line at http://www.botgard.ucla.edu/html/MEMBGNewsletter/Volume5number4/Thechileanwinepalm.html

[2] Correa Prats, Pastor. n.d. “La miel del palma.” La Palma Chilena. On line at http://www.palmar.cl/default.htm

[3] Latchanm, Ricardo E.  1936.  La Agricultura Precolombiana en Chile y los Países Vecinos. Santiago: Ediciones de la U of Chile. P. 59

[4] Pardo B, Oriana. 2004. Las Chichas en el Chile Precolombino.  Chloris Chilensis: Revista Chilena de Flora y vegetación.  Año7:2. on line athttp://www.chlorischile.cl/chichas/chichas.htm

[5] Graham, Maria. 1824. Journal of a Residence in Chile, During the Year 1822.  London: Longman, Hurst, etc. p. 507. On line at http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=Journal%20of%20a%20residence%20in%20Chile%20AND%20mediatype:texts

[6] Rundel, op. sit.

[7] Angulo, José Luis. 1985. "La Palma Chilena. Interesante Recurso Natural Renovable", Sociedad Agrícola y Forestal, Hacienda Las Palmas de Cocalán, Santiago, as quoted in Hugo Pinaud Rojas, La palma Chilena. Parque Nacional La Campana. CECITEC, on line at http://parquenacionallacampana.blogspot.com/2008/01/la-palma-chilena.html.

Chilean strawberries

[In Chile] one generally does not buy fruit, rather one is readily allowed to enter the orchards and eat all you wish. Only what are called “frutillas” [strawberries], and in Italy frauli, are sold, even though they grow wild and in the country I have seen full leagues of strawberries, growing of their own accord, those who cultivate them make a lot of money. They are very different that those that I have seen here in Rome, both in color and in flavor, and in quantity because they grow as big as pears, and although they are usually red, they are, in Concepción, white and yellow.  (Padre Alonso de Ovalle, Historia Relación del Reyno de Chile, 1646)[1]

One of the many pleasures of living in Chile is that strawberries arrive in the farmers’ markets in mid October and remain until March, and they are, in the Chilean phrase, “the three Bs:” bueno, bonito y barato (good, pretty and cheap-presently $650-750 CLP/kg, $.60 US/lb)—even if they are not "as big as pears.”

Strawberries (Fragaria chiloensis) have been a Chilean pleasure for a long time.  They grew wild in great abundance and were domesticated around 1300 AD by the ancestors of the Mapuche, south central Chile’s indigenous people.[2]  When the Spanish arrived they quickly became acquainted with Chilean strawberries and were impressed enough to take them back to Peru.  In his Commentarios Reales de los Incas, Garcilazo de la Vega, son of a Spanish conquistador and an Inca princess, described the fruits of Peru.

…he included in his descriptions a fruit called the Chili, which he thought probably had come to Cuzco in 1557, six years after Valdivia's conquest [of Chile]. According to him, this pleasant-tasting fruit bore small seeds on its surface.... the Chili was rather long and heart-shaped instead of round, and the plant grew on low bushes which crept along the ground. Botanists are certain that de la Vega was describing the strawberry. As he was unable to give the fruit a Peruvian name, he called it instead the "Chili," thus supporting the evidence that the species was F. chiloensis, the strawberry of the Mapuche and Huilliche Indians.[3]

Fortunately, for those already confused about Chile and chili, the name chili didn’t stick, and for some reason neither the traditional Spanish word “fresa” (strawberry) nor the Mapuche kelleñ were used:  frutilla, literally “little fruit,” became, and remains, Chilean for “strawberry.”

Mapuche strawberries

Fragaria chiloensis [4]     

    

We know little about how the Mapuche grew and used strawberries, but a young Spanish soldier, Francisco Núñez de Pineda y Bascuñán, who was a Mapuche captive for 6 months in 1622 (see Feasting with the Enemy), and wrote an account of his captivity many years later, mentions them frequently.

…they brought me a plate of good size of fresh cultivated strawberries, and without exaggeration some were so large they could not be finished in two bites.  They devote even more care to their strawberry beds than we give to vineyards because they dry great quantities of them for their chicha.[5]

Chicha, wine or cider fermented from grains or fruits, was an important in all Mapuche social occasions.   And while maize chicha was the most important, fruit chichas, and especially strawberry chicha, were greatly appreciated by the young Francisco.

Even though we had eaten a very good supper, they brought me a pitcher of chicha of dried strawberries, clear, tasty and spicy, the best that they have. ….We ate happily and with pleasure because they toasted us with strawberry chicha, which for me was the best present they could give.[6]

Strawberry chicha was produced through spontaneous fermentation of fruit, mashed with water, although when available the lees of a previous batch were added to speed up the process.  The time necessary for production varied with the temperature and the sugar content of the fruit and it probably yielded 3 to 7% alcohol.[7]  

The Mapuches’ domesticated strawberries were larger than the wild varieties, and tended to be pink or white, rather than red.  Louis Feuillee, a Catholic priest, provided a description of the Concepción strawberries he saw in 1709.

Several fruits, like pears, apples, strawberries, etc. were ripe. For dessert we were served some strawberries of a marvelous taste, whose size equaled that of our largest nuts. Their color is a pale white. They are prepared in the same manner as we fix them in Europe, and, although they have neither the color nor the taste of ours, they do not lack excellence.[8]

In the 1830s French botanist Claudio Gay traveled throughout Chile and later wrote extensively about Chilean natural history.  In his Agricultura he discussed the Chilean strawberry:

The frutilla or Chilean strawberry, called quelighen [kelleñ ] by the Araucanians, grows spontaneously in Chile, especially in the south where they are very abundant.   They are also cultivated in gardens and orchards, where they frequently are the size a walnut. They are rosy pink, but in cultivation they are usually white, especially in the north where their natural color is maintained only the first year.  They are the first fruit eaten in spring and by December vendors on horses and mules bring great baskets and sell them in the streets at very low prices.  It is also the custom to make festive trips to rural gardens in the countryside to eat them, especially to the little town of Renca, near Santiago, long famous for strawberries. [9]

These Mapuche strawberries are still cultivated in Chile, though no longer in Renca, and on a much smaller scale than the common commercial varieties.  In the community of Purén, north west of Temuco, some 25 small scale growers annually produce some 16,000 kg. with great success:

We are in full harvest and have great demand for the product. The prices are very good; here in this zone were are selling at 5 thousand pesos a kilo [$4.50 US/lb.] and in other regions we have been paid up to 7 thousand a kilo” said grower, Aurelio Carvajal.[10]

White strawberries of Purén. The Purén Strawberry Festival is in mid February. 

Origins of the modern strawberry

As George Darrow explains in The Strawberry: History, Breeding, and Physiology, Amédée François Frézier, a French engineer and Lieutenant Colonel of the French Army Intelligence Corps, was sent to Chile in 1712 as a spy with orders to “make Hydrographical Observations for the Use of Mariners, and for the Correction of the Charts, and also to take exact Plans of the most considerable Ports and fortresses along the Coasts” while passing himself off as a merchant captain.  On his journeys he visited Concepción, where he encountered the Mapuches’ strawberries:

….they plant whole Fields, with a Sort of Strawberry Rushes, differing from ours, in that the Leaves are rounder, thicker and more downy. The fruit is generally as big as a Walnut, and sometimes as a Hen's Egg, of a whitish Red, and somewhat less delicious of taste than our Wood Strawberries. I have given some Plants of them to Monsieur de Jussieu, for the King's Garden, where Care will be taken to bring them to bear. Besides these, there is plenty in the Woods of our European Kind. And in Short, all manner of Garden-Product among us, grow there plentifully, and almost without trouble.[11]

Strawberries were, of course, known in Europe, which had wild “wood strawberries,” under cultivation in France since 1300.  And specimens of the wild North American strawberry, F. virginiana, had been introduced in the 1600s, so the Chilean strawberries were added to botanical gardens where other varieties already existed.  But F. chiloensis almost never set fruit.   Frézier had, unknowingly, brought only female plants. 

So Chilean strawberries remained an exotic novelty in European gardens into the 1750, when it was discovered that by planting F. virginiana near by, strawberries were produced, some measuring 7½ inches in circumference. Thus was born the modern hybrid strawberry, a cross between F. chiloensis and F. virginiana, called F. ananassa or Fragaria × ananassa.

6 kg. of strawberries on the way to becoming preserves

Eating Chilean strawberries

While not among the top 20 world strawberry producers, Chile is a significant exporter of strawberries, second after Mexico in providing 7% of US strawberry imports in 2004[12] and 7^th worldwide as an exporter of frozen strawberries in 2005.

But most Chilean strawberries are sold fresh, within the domestic market, so what do Chileans do with their strawberries?  Nothing especially unusual, but here are a couple of Chilean strawberry recipes you may find interesting.

   

And Kuchen de Frutillas, Strawberry Kuchen (a recipe in English)

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[1] Padre Alfonso de Ovalle in Historica relacion del Reyno de Chile y de las missiones y ministerios que exercita en él la Compañía de Jesus, as quoted in Correa Vergara, Luis. 1938. Agricultura Chilena, tomo II. Santiago:  Imprenta Nascimenta. p. 218

[2] Dauben, Hugh. 2003. British Columbia’s Pacific Coast Beach Strawberry- Fragaria chiloensis. Davidsonia 14:1 p. 5-11.  on line at http://www.davidsonia.org/fragaria_chiloensis.

[3] Darrow, George McMillan. 1966. The Strawberry: History, Breeding, and Physiology.  New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Chapt. 4  on line at http://www.nal.usda.gov/pgdic/Strawberry/book/bokfour.htm

[4]Ibid.  Plate 4-3

[5] Núñez de Pineda y Bascuñán, Francisco, 1608-1680. 2001. El cautiverio feliz, Tomo dos; edición crítica de Mario Ferreccio Podestá y Raïssa Kordić  Riquelme. Santiago de Chile:  Seminario de Filología Hispánica, Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades, Universidad de Chile, p. 917. on line at http://books.google.cl/books?id=VOrKaGk48twC&printsec=frontcover&hl=en#v=onepage&q=&f=false

[6] Pardo B, Oriana. 2004. Las Chichas en el Chile Precolombino.  Chloris Chilensis: Revista Chilena de Flora y vegetación.  Año7:2. on line at http://www.chlorischile.cl/chichas/chichas.htm

[7] Ibid.

[8] Darrow, Op sit. Chapt. 4

[9]  Gay, Claudio. 1862-1865.  Agricultura, Tomo 2. París: En casa del autor; Chile: Museo de Historia Natural de Santiago, p. 13. on line at http://www.memoriachilena.cl/temas/documento_detalle.asp?id=MC0002688

[10] Frutilla Blanca de Purén: un negocio que cada día se ve más rentable para La Araucanía. El Austral. Dec. 28, 2008. on line at http://www.renacerdeangol.cl/prontus4_noticias/site/artic/20081228/pags/20081228000302.html

[11] Darrow, op cit. Chapt. 3 from the English translation of Frézier's book.

[12] Boriss, Hayley, et al. 2006.  Commodity Profile: Strawberries. Agricultural Issues Center

University of California.  On line at http://aic.ucdavis.edu/profiles/Strawberries-2006.pdf