[MR] Atlantia Digest, Vol 75, Issue 14

[Catherine Clark]

>From quietly standing in the shadows:

 

Where and when the "cloven fruit idea" stared in the SCA is up for guessing. From the historical angle please consider the following:

 

Cloves, indeed all the spices, were extremely valuable. Whole cloves even more so, even up into the 18th c. An apple or orange (depending on the country) stuffed with cloves was a simple, and valuable, pomander. Offering a single clove to a guest at a banquet was a way of displaying wealth and courtesy. Putting the cloves into a fruit was a simple and effective way of passing them around. As to the kissing, has everyone forgotten that the "kiss of greeting" was common? I agree that it is not, to our way of thinking, a healthy custom. But it was the custom then. 

 

Even Louis XIV chewed cloves as an offset to aging (rotting) teeth.