Rubies for Christmas

Its twinkling seeds bejewel festive feasts, but there's much more to the pomegranate than meets the eye

- Harry Pearson

THE lady in the greengrocer was in a reflective mood. 'Children these days have a Christmas list as long as your arm,' she said, 'but, when we were their age, we were happy with a pomegranate, a tangerine and a bag of nuts.' Nostalgia has a habit of taking us all into 'Four Yorkshiremen' territory, even if there was a certain truth to what she said. For generations of British children, the pomegranate was a festive treat. One that, like Turkish delight and boxes of dates, hinted at exotic lands of sunshine and sweetness.

'You crack it open and eat the seeds with this pin,' my mother explained to me, handing over the leathery globe, its yellowish skin touched with red as if it were blushing at some hidden sin. Children nowadays are unlikely to know that the easiest way to get at the juicy pomegranate seeds (a fruit contains about 600 of them, each covered in a pulp called aril, the colours shading from rich red to icy white) is by rolling the fruit around on a hard surface before breaking it open, but our parents were wise people. A pomegranate and a pin could keep a child quiet and out of mischief for hours, allowing them to get on with other, important tasks. It was the gastronomic equivalent of those hand-held puzzles in which one had to get six ball bearings into half a dozen holes simultaneously.