Wimbledon is the quintessential English sport event of the summer. The tournament has become synonymous of strawberries and cream. How did that happen?
It is said that a visit to the All England club during the grass court event without strawberries and cream is not complete. Apparently everyone must know that, because during the fortnight of championship tennis this year 8,615 bowls of strawberries were consumed a day, which means that 28,000 kg were sold over the tournament, served with over 7,000 litres of fresh cream. They are usually Grade I English strawberries grown in Kent.
Popular legend said that the responsible for this is King George V, believed to be the one who first introduced the treat to the courtside crowds. However, the tradition seems more likely to date from around the first Wimbledon championship, in 1877, when the King was only a 12-year-old child. In 1881, as said the book “Anyone for Tennis: the Telegraph Book of Wimbledon” reads, the Telegraph correspondent wrote in his piece of news on the Final that “the refreshment pavilion emptied directly...for strawberries and cream”. This would mean that the strawberries and cream tradition is as old as the tournament itself. Other historians pinpoint Cardinal Wolsey as the first person who mixed strawberries and cream. If so, Wimbledon most popular tradition would have been invented more than three centuries before the championship was inaugurated.
If you want to try the most famous treat at Wimbledon, you should be ready to pay £2,50 for a bowl containing a minimum of ten strawberries. Maybe even King George V would have considered them slightly overpriced.
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