North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["William C. Garthright" <billg@inebraska.com>]

> Gooseberries are pleasant but bland, red currants are beautiful but 
> also lacking in aromatics and whites aren't even beautiful and no 
> taste improvement over the reds.  Black currants to my taste buds are 
> so much more complex and interesting than these others they should be 
> considered an entirely different category.
>  
> I realize that this is a minority opinion on this list but apparently 
> not in the rest of the currant producing world where black currants 
> are cultivated much more extensively according to numbers I came up 
> with while searching the web.  I think this says a lot for the 
> culinary potential of the blacks.


I've never tried a black currant (except for the clove currants, which 
are entirely different, I know). But for my own purposes, the culinary 
potential of a fruit is of little interest. I don't cook (well, much 
beyond the 'frying bacon' stage), and I really don't want to start 
making desserts, which is usually the point of fruit.

Of course, I realize that currants in general are probably a bad choice 
for me, then. I planted one red, one white, and one pink currant, just 
to try them out. So far, I'd have to say that was probably a mistake, 
just because of my interests and needs (although I must admit that I 
love the color of the red currants). And my clove currants, as I noted 
before, have been a big disappointment. I kept hearing that they *were* 
good to eat fresh.

The gooseberries have been a little different. Only the Poorman has been 
really tasty (so far), but they're all edible when they get almost ripe 
(I like the little sour bite much more than the bland ripe flavor of 
most of them). And the fact is, they'll grow and produce abundant fruit 
in a place with very little direct sunlight. I can't imagine what else 
would do the same (that would taste better).

Anyway, the black currants do sound interesting,... though they're 
probably not for me. I do like hearing about them, Alan, and I'll have 
to find some black currant items to try sometime.

Bill
Lincoln, NE (zone 5)

--
Even McCain's most blatant confusions, memory lapses and outright lies 
still barely cause a ripple, whether he's railing against a piece of 
pork he in fact voted for, as he did at the Saddleback Church 
pseudodebate last weekend, or falsifying crucial details of his marital 
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records last month. - Frank Rich