I froze those raspberries and then used them for my Christmas trifle along with a few brambles which I came across in another wee tub, having forgotten all about them. I also made an attempt at a raspberry curd-type mixture for the top of the madeira cake though next time I think I’d sieve out all the seeds; that was my second go at making a raspberry layer and while it did thicken up, I’m going to use more cornflour in future. My custard layer was a bit sloppy so that element needs some work too. Will I remember all of this though in twelve months time?
Queen Victoria had a layer of jelly in her ‘Scotch Trifle’ but I don’t hold with that at all. According to Alanna Knight, the Balmoral recipe consisted of plain sponge soaked in a schooner of sherry, a layer of raspberry jelly with tinned fruit cocktail on top, then thick custard topped with half a pint of whisked double cream. F Marian McNeill in The Scots Kitchen wants “stale sponge cakes or rice cake, ratafias, raspberry or strawberry jam, lemon rind, sherry, brandy (optional), rich custard, cream, garnishing” in her “Scots Trifle” recipe and as far as I’m concerned, hers is the definitive word on the inclusion of jelly.
I know, I know a trifle isn’t the healthiest way to eat berries but thanks to our freezers they’re available in December and they fair sharpen up this traditional festive pudding; moreover it can be put together on Christmas Eve, freeing up a bit of time next morning. Christian Isobel Johnstone has a recipe for “An Elegant Trifle” in her 1826 Cook and Housewife’s Manual (a book I might have mentioned previously!) I did consider making it this year, though with the flower decoration hers is clearly a summer recipe; however I’d have needed to have started on the 23rd as you can see below the work that went into it. I wasn’t sure either of the froth-skimming business or what she meant by a “sieve reversed”. I did though buy a reusable muslin bag for straining purposes.
We have so many berry recipes that involve copious amounts of sugar but they’ll date from pre-freezer times. In Flora Celtica, in their “Food on the moors” section, there are three paragraphs on “Healthy Scandinavians” which tell of their berry-collecting habits and the “impressive” medicinal benefits of eating them. Blaeberries for example have “been linked to the prevention of cancers and heart disease”; they “contain antioxidant, antiviral, antibacterial and anti-inflammatory compounds, and are rich in potassium, phosphates and a range of vitamins”. Schoolchildren in Finland get a day off school in the autumn to go berry-picking and “the harvest is stored in deep freezes at their schools”. ”Cancer rates in Finland have dropped dramatically in the last 25 years, though whether or not this is diet-related is open to debate” (book published in 2004). If you want to follow this up, there’s an article online from 2021 about the anticancer effects of eating lingonberries and bilberries + a list of related articles underneath at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34073356/
Back to Flora Celtica, there are short extracts from Dr F Buchanan White’s The Edible Wild Fruits of Scotland, 1876 on blaeberries, cranberries and cowberries so it’s not just raspberries and strawberries that can be gathered and eaten if we had a mind to do so. In the 18th century, cranberries were gathered in the borders and exported to London in barrels, selling at “three pence a quart”. In the 1950s, Baxters were selling jellies made from “moorland fruits” which were harvested locally in Deeside.
In her introduction to The Scottish Berries Bible, Sue Lawrence writes of her school holidays spent picking berries “all day long in sun, rain or wind” and of her preference for a job at the raspberry canes over the prickly gooseberry bushes, the too-easily-squashed blackcurrants and redcurrants or the sore-back-inducing strawberry plants. She also tells us that raspberry pips are “of great historical significance as they were found in glacial deposits in the Scottish Lowlands – proof that the wild berry has been with us for quite some time. Scotland has retained its claim to be the world’s best raspberry grower because of its cool, moist climate.” Her wee book has some interesting and unusual recipes: Bramble and Lemon Curd, Redcurrant Parfait, Strawberry Risotto (other ingredients are the normal ones), Mackerel with Gooseberry Sauce (or Herring) …. And her Scots Trifle recipe is jelly-free!
Annette Hope’s A Caledonian Feast has an interesting section on Scottish fruit cultivation which she says was always important in our diet, much of it until relatively recently gathered from the wild. She refers to Mrs Grant in Memoirs of a Highland Lady writing of “the blaeberries and cranberries growing in the hills”. She also quotes from Hugh MacDiarmid’s autobiography, Lucky Poet: “Many a great basket of blaeberries I gathered on the hills round Langholm . . . . then there were the little hard black cranberries, and . . . . the speckled crane-berries, but above all . . . . in the extensive policies of the Duke of Buccleuch, there were great stretches of wild raspberry bushes, the fruit of which the public were allowed to pick . . ”
Then from one of his poems about when raspberries and romance went together while picking in the Langfall woods: “lips reider than the fruit. / And I filled baith my basket and my hert / Mony and mony a time.” A fellow poet William Soutar has a similar line in Blaeberry Mou: “But nane sae blue as the blaeberry mou / That needna tell whaur it’s been.”
And while we’re going all cultural, have a listen to Kat Healy singing the Highland Fairy Lullaby. Try https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06cSRJvntlY
Keep a close eye on your baby when you’re out gathering blaeberries.
F Marian McNeill includes a recipe for blaeberry jam in her great work The Scots Kitchen and she wanted a pound of rhubarb added to the mixture for every seven pounds of fruit. In footnotes, she tells us that my old pal Faujas de St Fond (though not yet The Loon’s, I don’t think) mentioned eating this flavour of jam in his travel books of the 1790s. Also, Martin Martin wrote in 1703 in his Description of the Western Islands: “Fluxes are Cured by taking now and then a Spoonful of the Syrup of blew Berries that grew on the Mertillus.”
Annette Hope explains that growing soft fruit in gardens became more popular with both the greater availability of sugar and the “longer leases for cottage and farm tenants”; gooseberries, raspberries and currants could be grown on even a small patch of ground. Then, “the introduction of steam transport … improved the market for soft fruit, and as packing and marketing techniques developed, demand increased.” In the 19th century, Clydeside and the areas south of Edinburgh were famous for strawberries; raspberries were widely grown in Perthshire and in Angus.
Ms Hope quotes from Patrick Neill’s 1813 book Scottish Gardens and Orchards: “During the season, numerous parties are formed to eat strawberries at Roslin, between 7 and 8 miles South from Edinburgh; a place remarkable for the beauty of its scenery, with a castle hallowed in song, and a Gothic chapel, surpassed by none in the richness of its architectural embellishments.” That sounds like a grand day out.
Nowadays I suspect there are acres of plastic covering our raspberry canes and strawberry plants and I’ve seen how they’re sold in supermarket packs plastered with the union flag. I was heartened though to see on a Blairgowrie community website the following article on community fruit picking at https://discoverblairgowrie.co.uk/mini-website-community-news-items/community-fruit-picking-returns-to-blairgowrie-and-rattray
Here’s Scottish Traveller Belle Stewart singing the famous “Berryfields of Blair” about all the different folk who travelled to the area to pick berries: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBHMCTucV8Q . She was born Isobella MacGregor in a bow tent near Blairgowrie in 1906 and she died in the Cottage Hospital there in 1997. She and her family knew a thing or two about fruit-picking and song-making and seasonal eating.
Splendid, Bella! 