A drinkable history of colonialism in North Africa, vol 2:
LEMONADE ?? You are probably familiar with the delicious orange sparkling soda #Orangina. What you may not know is that it was invented in Algeria, in a dramatic TALE OF TWO SODAS.
Colonial Algeria was a great producer of citrus ? so much so that a Catholic monk near Oran, frère Clément ended up giving his name to the clementine (which he supposedly ’discovered’)
n the worldwide recession of the 1930s, Algeria had a crapload of oranges and nowhere to sell them to. So a man from Boufarik, Léon Béton, decided to use these excess oranges to make a refreshing sparkling drink: voilà, Orangina was invented in 1935... OR WAS IT?
WHO ?? INVENTED ??ORANGINA??? Orangina was at the centre of a bitter controversy (geddit? Bitter fruit?) A Spanish doctor from Valencia, Trigo Miralles, claimed to have developed the recipe first - but follow me to an even shadier conspiracé
This is the national drink of Algeria: #Selecto, a sweet soda made by the #Hamoud_Boualem company
As you can see from their logo, the Boualem family has been in the soda business for a long time - IN FACT, they won a prize for their original lemonade (gazouz blanche pour les amateurs) all the way back in 1889 at the Paris World Fair
The Boualems are a rare case of Algerian entrepreneurial success that made it through the entire colonial period with their delicious lemonades, while winning prizes and keeping ownership in the same family until this day
o this day some claim that other lemonade companies including Beton’s Orangina stole recipes and techniques from the industrious Boualems
So, pied-noir Orangina (now produced near Marseille) or Algerian Hamoud Boualem? Next time you sip, drink up the history
▻https://twitter.com/ArthurAsseraf/status/1081849364342104064
#limonade #alimentation #colonialisme #histoire #citronnade #géographie_culturelle #colonisation #Algérie
