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  • From: LEE REICH <lreich@hvc.rr.com>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Cornelian cherries recipes
  • Date: Sun, 08 Aug 2004 19:37:25 -0400

This is from the "Harvest and Use" section of the chapter on cornelian
cherries in my book UNCOMMON FRUITS FOR
EVERY GARDEN (Timber Press, 2004).

Lee Reich
www.leereich.com

Cornelian cherries ripen from summer through fall, the time varying from
clone to clone. Average yield of fruit
from a single tree is between thirty and seventy pounds, although there are
trees that bear more than two
hundred pounds of fruit.
Fruits from a single tree ripen over an extended period. The simplest way to
harvest in quantity is to give
the branches a gentle shake periodically once the fruit has colored, then
collect fallen fruit from the ground.
Ripe fruits left to hang on the tree become more concentrated in flavor and
sweetness. Some people prefer to
allow harvested fruit to sit at room temperature for a day or more, in which
case the flavor becomes sweet, but
more sedate.
When the fruit was popular in Britain, it was rarely eaten out of hand,
probably because better-tasting clones
were unknown there. The fruits were held in high esteem for the delicious
tarts they made, and shops commonly
sold rob de cornis, a thickened, sweet syrup of cornelian cherry fruits. The
juice also added pizazz to cider
and perry.
In regions of Europe where cornelian cherry is still a popular comestible,
the fruit finds uses other than for
just fresh eating. Since ancient times, the unripe fruits have been pickled
as a substitute for olives.

Cornel-berries, which we use instead of olives . . . should be picked while
they are still hard and not very
ripe; they must not, however be too unripe. They should then be dried for a
day in the shade; then vinegar and
must boiled down to half or one-third of its original volume should be mixed
and poured in, but it will be
necessary to add some salt, so that no worms or other form of animal life can
be engendered in them, but the
better method of preservation is when two parts of must boiled down to half
its original volume are mixed with
one part of vinegar.
(Columella, On Agriculture, first century A.D.)

Cornelian cherry is a favored ingredient of Turkish serbert, a fruit drink
sold in stores and from portable
containers carried like knapsacks on the backs of street vendors. (Another
common English name for cornelian
cherry is "sorbet," though cornelian cherry is not the only fruit used for
the Turkish serbert.) In Ukraine,
cornelian cherries are juiced, then bottled commercially into soft drinks.
There, the fruits are also made into
conserves, fermented into wine, distilled into a liqueur, and dried.
The generic epithet, Cornus, is derived from the Latin word for "horn,"
alluding to the hardness of the wood,
a quality I confirm from my experience in grafting this plant. Pliny wrote
that cornelian cherry wood was used
for making "spokes of wheels, or else for making wedges for splitting wood,
and pins or bolts, which have all
the hardness of those of iron." The wood’s hardness also lent it a more
menacing use in the making of spears.
>From the many gory passages relating this use by ancient writers, the
>following lines from Virgil’s Aeneid
serve as example:

Through the yielding air
The Italian cornel wings, and piercing through
The gullet ’neath his deep chest passed right on;
The cavern of the dismal wound gives up
Its foaming tide . . .

Returning to beneficent uses of cornelian cherry, we find many parts of the
cornelian cherry plant applied in
folk medicine. The fruit is allegedly beneficial in the treatment of gout,
anemia, skin diseases, painful
joints, and disrupted metabolism. Fruit, leaves, or bark have been employed
for gastrointestinal disorders and
tuberculosis. The Russians report that the fruit contains components that
leach radioactivity from the body.
But I digress---our primary interest here is with the gustatory pleasure
afforded by the fruits, especially
the fresh fruits of a superior clone plucked straight from the tree. The
fruit is as worth cultivating today as
it was three centuries ago when John Parkinson wrote of the cornelian cherry
(in Paradisi in Sole) that "by
reason of the pleasantnesse in them when they are ripe, they are much desired
. . . also preferued and eaten,
both for rarity and delight."








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