The Viennese have a particular fondness for apricots, and their coffee-house chefs make wonderful pastries using them as the principal ingredient, writes Diarmaid Ó Muirithe.
They even make the confections without sugar, for diabetics, a practice our chefs might copy. Nobody is sure when the fruit reached the Mediterranean from China, but it was certainly known on the tables of Rome in the first century BC, and not as "apricot".
The early Latin and Greek words for the apricot tree are Armeniaca and Armeniakon, respectively; it was thought the fruit came from Armenia. Later, when it was found this wasn't so, the fruit was given the Latin name praecoquum, "early ripening", because it ripens earlier than the peach. In the first century AD, the Greek physician Dioscorides suggested replacing the Greek word for apricots, armeniaka, with praikokion, borrowed from the Latin; the Arabic also borrowed the Latin as birquk or barquk. Are you with me so far?
Al is the Arabic article; add it to birquk and barquk and you have the ultimate origin of the European names for the apricot: the Italian albiococca, French abricot and English abrecock, the early form of apricot, came from the Catalan albercoc and abercoc. The "b" in abrecock was replaced by "p" because of an etymology given credence by John Minsheu in 1617. He thought the fruit was in aprico coctus, ripened in a sunny place. Nice try.
The peach, too, is a native of China. It is a little easier to trace its etymology. It was called melon Persikon in ancient Greek and malum Persicum in Latin - Persian apples, because "Persian" described anything exotic from the mysterious East. The Latin persicum, from neuter of Persicus, Persian, gave Late Latin persica, which gave Middle French peche for the fruit, from which Middle English borrowed, to give peach.
The damson plum is named from its place of origin. It is from the Latin Damascenum, and the prunum Damascenum was literally the plum of Damascus.
So if ever you go to Vienna, try the coffee houses' Aprikose, Pfirsich or Damaszenerpflaume confections. My mouth is watering.