PRINCE OF ONIONS This December British trade professionals and the public were invited to discover the delights of Roscoff pink onions from Brittany. Peter Mercer went aboard.
IN
1828 a young farmer from Roscoff, on the northern coast of Brittany, decided that it was about time the English had a taste of a proper onion. He was so successful in selling his distinctive pink Brittany onions over there that soon French onion sellers, or Johnnies, as the English called them, were familiar sights throughout southern England, carrying their plaited onions from door to door on their shoulders or draped across their bicycles. Even if they didn’t all wear striped jerseys and berets, they became, for the English, an iconic image of the typical Frenchman. By the 1860s Roscoff had become the market gardening capital of western France and hundreds of boats carrying onions and artichokes left its port for England every year. In 1929 more than 9000
14 Industry Europe
tonnes of Brittany onions were sold in the UK by almost 1400 Johnnies, whose bicycles were to be seen as far north as Glasgow. Today around 20 Breton producers still travel from door to door across the UK but, of course, the technology of produce transportation has changed a bit – now the pink onions travel daily across the Channel by Brittany Ferries. Although not always. At the end of November, 4.5 tonnes of Prince de Bretagne pink onions were hand loaded by 200 people on to a 300-tonne, 20-gun frigate, which then slipped out of Roscoff harbour and set sail for England. The vessel was moored in London, at St Katherine’s Docks, near Tower Bridge, for ten days in early December – her fully rigged three masts standing out among the usual luxury motor yachts.
