As we bid farewell – for the time being – to Shakespeare, and move on a few years into gory Jacobean revenge drama, we say hello to the apricot. It has been speculated that the apricot originated in either Armenia – about 50 different varieties of the fruit are grown there nowadays – India or China. By Roman times apricots had spread into the Mediterranean region, and they have been known in England since the 16th century; one story says that Henry VIII’s gardener introduced apricots to England from Italy in 1542. Continue reading “Apricots”