English Apple Pie

Sated as we are with the riches of the world (asparagus from Kenya, strawberries from California and courgettes from Morocco as early as January), we can hardly imagine that the cabbage and the carrot were once exotic imported vegetables, that Henry VIII himself brought back from the Field of the Cloth of Gold the first cherries ever to be seen here, and that the pineapple was considered so extraordinary when it first arrived on these shores that the reigning monarch, Charles II, was painted receiving the first specimen as if it was a rare treasure.