Cornelian cherry ✦

Cornouille

What it is

The wood is dense enough to sink in water, and antiquity used it for spear shafts and javelins long before anyone paid attention to the fruit. That fruit is ripe only once it lets go: growers spread a sheet under the tree and shake, and whatever is still holding on is not ready.

In the kitchen

It carries enough pectin to set a jelly with nothing added, so keep the sugar down to about 700 g per litre of juice or it sets like rubber. Underripe fruit brined like an olive makes a sour pickle worth having; ripe fruit will not.

Goes with

White sugar Honey Walnut Lamb Garlic Coriander seed

In season alongside

Lingonberry Blackberry Blackcurrant Damson Elderberry Gooseberry

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