Let me start with a pudding: compote of stewed gooseberries, say, sweetened with sugar and flavoured with a vanilla pod, accompanied by a scoop of ice cream. For some, it’s the essence of a British summer, to be scoffed with relish as soon as the first gooseberries go on sale this week. But for others, we’re talking food hell; sour little fruit, simmered to a pulp and disguised with sugar.
Gooseberries are divisive. People either scrunch up their noses in disgust or extol the beauty of a well-made fool. Everyone has an opinion — even if it’s a tale of overly sour puddings being forced on them by ageing relatives as children. As well as being the source of childhood memories, and of course, a term used to describe someone who hangs around a couple, possibly so-called because of the feeling of sourness that accompanies them — gooseberries have an important place within our national fruit heritage. They were once a celebrated English fruit: in the 19th century, clubs were set up in their honour and varieties were named after our national heroes.
That these small, furry fruit don’t have the obvious advantages of other, sweeter berries didn’t matter so much when we had to make do with what grew easily in our chilly climate. Gooseberry bushes are suited perfectly to the UK. They are hardy, tolerant to wet and cold, and produce fruit however much they are neglected.
But the arrival of foreign fruit, just as cheap and much sweeter, has hastened their fall from fashion. It’s hard to sing the praises of a hairy sour grape when there are passion fruit and lychees available for the same price. These days, fool-fanatics may find it difficult to track down a punnet of gooseberries, even as the season peaks at the end of this month.
Figures from the agricultural census, recorded by Defra, show that UK gooseberry production has followed a steady pattern of decline since 2000. It’s hard to know if this is simply a response to drooping consumer demand, or a reflection of supermarkets’ enthusiasm for marketing sexy, exotic fruit rather than humdrum British staples. Given the bounty emerging on UK bushes and fruit trees at this time of year, the gooseberry is disappointingly outnumbered in shops by imported fruit.
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In Sainsbury’s, you should find gooseberries from next week, but in only 150 of its 537 stores. Meanwhile, Waitrose shows support for the berries, but at a high price: £3.49 for a 450g punnet. At my local fruit and veg shop in London, the owner tells me it’s not worth stocking gooseberries. They are too expensive for the few people who ask for them. Unless you can stretch to several pounds a punnet, you’ll be better off visiting a Pick Your Own farm. Either that or raiding a neighbour’s gardens — most aficionados grow their own bushes.
“Gooseberries have few friends,” laments Jonathan Fryer, who runs tours of the National Fruit Collection at Brogdale Farm, in Kent. Fryer who is writing a book to chronicle their history and the many varieties, which number over 500. “Nobody perceives them as interesting. People don’t want the extra work of stewing and sweetening them ... they want to eat their fruit straight from the punnet.”
At the National Fruit Collection, it’s a gooseberry lover’s paradise. Fryer knows the name of every one of the 300 types growing in these few acres, from the large smooth purple berries — called dessert gooseberries — that ripen later in the summer to the downy green fruits currently in season.
Row after row of bushes flaunt taut, fat berries of every shade. Encouraged by Fryer, I bite into one. It’s sharp, like grapefruit, but not as unpleasant as people seem to think.
The tangy flavour is what makes gooseberries special, according to the chef Thomasina Miers, the founder of Wahaca restaurants and a devoted seasonal food fan. “The contrast between a tart gooseberry and whipped cream is divine,” she says. “And people seem to forget that they are incredibly good for you, packed with vitamin C . . . we should all be growing our own bushes.” To anyone who says “yuk”, she recommends that you be more liberal with the sugar. This is the magic ingredient that turns a sour gooseberry into something delicious.
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Pam “the Jam” Corbin, another gooseberry-lover, runs jam-making classes at the River Cottage in Dorset and favours gooseberry jam over all others. She agrees that our reluctance to use enough sugar could explain why so many people have been put off. “It’s a leftover from wartime habits. After the war, sugar was expensive. Fruits such as gooseberries and rhubarb got a bad press because they weren’t sweetened enough.”
She also points out that gooseberries make fantastic jam. “They have three of the four things you need — flavour, pectin and acid, so you just have to add sugar. With other fruit, such as strawberries, you have to add lemon juice and extra pectin.”
Perhaps it is time for a revival of unusual berries. This year, for the first time, Marks and Spencer is selling a number of rarely seen varieties, including loganberries and tayberries, a cross between a blackberry and a raspberry. M&S will also stock a sweet gooseberry, called a fae-berry, which can be eaten straight from the punnet.
There are other forgotten British fruits still waiting for a makeover. According to the local campaigning organisation Common Ground, orchards containing mulberries, damsons and greengages (green plums) are all at risk from being bulldozed. Like gooseberries, these fruits are an acquired taste, best for poaching in a mixture of sugar and water, or turning into jam. They also tend to be picked locally rather than bought, so the commercial market is not there to support them.
While passionate about the demise of all British fruit, it is gooseberries that Fryer comes back to, because of their valuable contribution to crumbles and pies, as well as their historic importance. “We’ve been eating them longer than most fruits,” he says. “In 1725, the first recorded gooseberries were eaten by the King.” The following century, varieties took their names from historical figures — there’s a Lloyd George gooseberry as well as a Queen Victoria. Later that century, gooseberry clubs emerged from the pubs in the North of England, which hosted competitions with the sole aim being to grow the heaviest gooseberry. A couple of these eccentric associations of fruit-growers still exist in Cheshire and North Yorkshire.
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The one unavoidable downside of gooseberries is that they grow hedgerow-style on thorny bushes. Having stooped over one for half an hour, I can understand why there might not be many willing pickers to provide the produce. First, you have to squat down, then navigate the razor-sharp thorns protecting the berries from birds.
Annette Cummings, a fruit-picker at Brogdale, admits that they’re the worst possible fruit to pick, holding up fingers covered in plasters. “There’s no point wearing gloves,” she says. “It makes you less nimble and the thorns get through anyway.” Tomorrow, she’s moving on to the eight-acre cherry orchard; a big relief. Cherries might not have the same historic connections or the same unique tang, but for a fruit picker, like a couple on a night out, anything is better than a gooseberry.