Fairchild: Testing New Foods 



23 



it to one of his friends, that this friend 

 tried it on his family, who passed it on 

 to the colored man that cut the grass ; 

 the colored man gave it to the chickens, 

 and they all declined to like it — my 

 precious and only mango, which I knew 

 Englishmen in India would rave over ! 

 The experience was a crushing disap- 

 pointment. I had taken the mango to 

 the wrong market. It took me some 

 time to realize that the man in authority 

 over one is the very last man that one 

 should prejudice against one's work 

 by trying to get him to eat a new fruit. 

 Had I been able to give the same va- 

 riety of mango to scores of people and 

 compare their opinions, I would have 

 discovered that there are people every- 

 where who will, as well as some who 

 will not, like any given new fruit or 

 vegetable. I would have received en- 

 couragement and gained much confi- 

 dence by finding that for every person 

 who disliked the mango, there were a 

 dozen who liked it, and a half-dozen 

 who were enthusiastic about it. 



I made a test of the mango last sum- 

 mer. I sent some of the finest flavored 

 fruits I have ever eaten to five ladies, 

 wives of Cabinet ofificials, and at the 

 same time I served the same or equally 

 good varieties at the Cosmos and Press 

 Clubs of Washington. One of the 

 Cabinet ladies remarked, in regard to. 

 those which I had sent her, 'T am very 

 sorry, but we did not like the mangos." 

 Another said, "I am deeply apprecia- 

 tive of your remembering us, and I was 

 tremendously interested in the mangos, 

 but I am constrained to be perfectly 

 frank and tell you that we did not like 

 them. It is just possible that they are 

 one" of the foods for which one could 

 cultivate a taste, but it apparently is not 

 a natural one with any member of my 

 family." Another of the ladies re- 

 marked, "We found the mangos which 

 you so kindly sent most delicious. This 

 fruit would add exceedingly to our list 

 of edible fruits." Another replied, 

 "The mangos were perfectly delicious. 

 Never in Mexico did I eat better, 

 and I am delighted to know they are 

 being grown in this country, for now 

 they will be in the market here." Still 



another of the ladies who had eaten the 

 mango before reported, "But, really, I 

 never ate such fine mangos either in 

 Mexico or the West Indies." Can you 

 imagine the cold chill which settles 

 down on a pioneer when he first starts 

 out with a new fruit if, early in its 

 history, he runs into a "throw down" 

 such as two ladies of such prominence 

 socially have given him, or how his 

 spirits rise when he finds that three out 

 of five are of quite the opposite opin- 

 ion, or how he begins to see things dif- 

 ferently when he makes a trial such as 

 I made last summer in the Cosmos and 

 Press Clubs of Washington and dis- 

 covers that out of eighty-five who 

 tasted the mango only four diliked it 

 and that there were a large proportion 

 of them who pronounced it delicious. 

 Only one condemned it with the words, 

 "It is too sweet. I dislike the flavor." 

 I once opened a delicious mango and 

 showed how it should be eaten, to the 

 manager of the famous Touraine Hotel, 

 and he turned it down as something his 

 guests would not like. Therefore they 

 never got a chance at it. So far as the 

 mango is concerned there is no longer 

 any doubt in my mind that most of 

 those who do not like it could easily 

 acquire the taste for it if they cared to 

 overcome their prejudice against it. 



Think what the eating of an orange 

 means to a child, the peeling of it, the 

 separation of the segments, the disposal 

 of the seeds and indigestible fiber, the 

 oil which covers his hands and poisons 

 his mouth if he tastes it. I can still 

 remember the oranges of my childhood, 

 and as I look back upon them the eat- 

 ing amounted to a ceremonial. Today, 

 even, the eating of an orange on a Pull- 

 man is not an easy thing to do grace- 

 fully. We forget these things and try, 

 without the preliminary instruction, to 

 get people to eat such a fruit as the 

 mango or the Japanese persimmon and 

 are surprised that the public laughs 

 at us. 



The story is told, and I believe it, of 

 an Englishman of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury (tea was so rare at that time that 

 it was a privilege to be allowed to touch 

 the tongue to a few leaves of it) who. 



