It’s strawberry season. Hurrah! You don’t need to be a culinary wizard to make the most of these delicious fruits. Here’s a simple recipe for you. Ingredients: Some strawberries. Method: Pick up strawberries and put in mouth.
Some people do like to gild the lily, though, and if you go looking for recipes involving strawberries, you’ll no doubt come across the instruction ‘First hull the strawberries’. Like everyone knows what that means.
Hull is a word that’s brimming with meanings, but to most of us it means one of two things: 1 the body of a ship; 2 a city on Humberside. It also, however, means the outer covering of a fruit, seed, nut, grain or legume, more commonly known as a pod, shell or husk. In fact, the hull of a ship is so called because the earliest maritime travellers were tiny people who used hollowed out nut shells and pea pods to get about on the water.
Hulling is the act of removing this outer covering from said fruit, seed, nut, grain or legume to leave the tender, tasty bit. The fact that a strawberry doesn’t have such a covering hasn’t stopped the recipe writers from using the term to mean trimming off the leaf and stalk.
Fair enough. It’s thanks to them that I’ve learnt that Hull was featured in The Times 2024 Best Places to Live Guide, and that Rough Guides named it one of the 10 best places to visit in the world in 2016. Who knew? When you’re planning a weekend away and wondering where to go, you probably don’t think of Hull. But you should. There’s more to it than a rugby league team, a Housemartins album and the smell of fish.
Hull (short for Kingston upon Hull) takes its name from its position on the River Hull, which flows into the Humber Estuary at, er, Hull. The River Hull takes its name from the large number of tiny people who used to travel along it in hollowed out nut shells and pea pods, ferrying wool from the local monasteries for export to Europe and beyond.
This is the city that gave us such creative and pioneering spirits as William Wilberforce, Amy Johnson, the aforementioned Housemartins, Tom Courtenay, Maureen Lipman, Reece Shearsmith, Mick Ronson and Ebenezer Cobb Morley, first ever Secretary of the Football Association. Clearly there’s something in the water that makes it well worth a visit.
In case you’re wondering, Rod Hull was from the Isle of Sheppey. But enough of that. This was supposed to be a celebration of the strawberry, not a tourist information bulletin on behalf of Hull. But that’s what words can do – they can lead you down rabbit holes. So remember that, next time you’re strimming round your strawberry patch. One slight lapse in concentration and you could find yourself having tea with Emu.
