The stunning bag of clementines awaiting me when I got home tonight filled the house with the heady tang of southern Europe whilst we put up our Christmas decorations. One potted history of small oranges later, we are left with the fact that for me they say Christmas more than mince pies, toy advertising and comedy visits to casualty at four in the morning after the office party. Clementines have grown in popularity as an on-the-go. They’re skins are dark orange in color, but smoother and glossier than that of a Tangerine. While Tangerines are a type of Mandarin, Clementines are a hybrid of a Mandarin and a sweet orange (like the Texas Navel). Satsumas from Satsuma, the Japanese province in which they were first cultivated, though, confusingly they are sometimes called mikans. The smallest of all the orange varieties is the Clementine. Tangerines, with loose skin and less sweetness, where named after their original port of origin in Tangiers, in fact, the word tangerine was already in common parlance before then as an adjective describing something from Tangiers. They are seemingly named after one Father Pierre Clement who, the story goes, inadvertently bred the hybrid orange in his orphanage garden in Oman. Of the various types of mandarin, clementines are smaller and tend to have fewer seeds, a very thin easily peeled skin. Mandarins have been cultivated in China for a couple of thousand years, where they were deemed a fruit only suitable for the upper echelons of society and so were only exported to Europe in the 1900's. Clementines, tangerines and satsumas are all types of mandarin. The smell of someone peeling a mandarin is one of those great Christmas smells, like chestnut roasters in Covent Garden, mulled wine at a friend’s house and photocopier toner at office parties.įor the uninitiated (like myself a couple of hours ago) who are a little unsure as the difference between all these types of small orangey fruit then here's a quick heads up. People gorging themselves on mandarins is a common sight in the office in the hope that it will ward of that seasons cold virus. Clementines, tangerines and satsumas seem to be everywhere in December as the gluts of Spanish and North African winter oranges hit the chilly climes of northern Europe and we all go a bit nuts for them. The true sign of Christmas being on the horizon is for me the day that there are oranges everywhere.
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