Crowberry ✦

Camarine noire

What it is

It is not a berry bush but a creeping heath, and it holds its ground by suppressing the competition: its leaves leach a compound that stops other seedlings establishing, which is how one crowberry mat can carpet a whole hillside. Inuit and Sami households stored the fruit through winter mixed with fat or oil, as food long before anyone thought of it as flavour.

In the kitchen

Low in both sugar and acid, it does nothing on its own: press it for juice and lift it with lemon or a few crushed juniper berries before it goes anywhere near a sauce. The seeds are hard and stay hard, so sieve rather than blend.

Goes with

Juniper berry Venison Cream White sugar Rye berries Angelica

In season alongside

Ptarmigan Myrtle Bay bolete Bog myrtle Cauliflower mushroom Cervione hazelnut

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