Ingredient

Blackberry

The blackberry is the one wild fruit most people in Britain have actually picked. It keeps its core when picked, which makes it firmer and better-travelled than a raspberry, and it ranges from sweet to eye-wateringly sharp depending on where on the cluster it grew.

Not all berries on one bramble are the same

On a blackberry cluster the berry at the tip ripens first and is the largest and sweetest. The ones behind it ripen later and are progressively smaller and sharper. A handful picked indiscriminately therefore tastes uneven, and the standard complaint that blackberries are sour usually means the tip berries had already gone.

The test is not colour but release. A ripe blackberry comes away with almost no pull. If you have to tug, it is not ready, and it will not improve in a bowl.

Fully ripe fruit is dull rather than glossy, and slightly soft. Shiny black berries are usually a few days early.

Picking sensibly

The rules are practical rather than mystical.

• Pick above waist height where you can, away from paths used by dogs and away from road edges.
• Take the tip berries and leave the rest to ripen. Coming back in a week is more productive than stripping a bramble.
• Use a rigid container, not a bag. Blackberries crush and stain.
• Do not fill it deep. More than about four inches and the bottom layer is jam whether you wanted it or not.
• Look at what you pick. A small white grub in blackberries is common and harmless; floating the fruit briefly in salted water brings them out if it bothers you.
• The traditional cut-off is Michaelmas, 29 September. The folklore says the devil spits on them. The practical version is that later fruit is wetter, less sweet and much more likely to carry mould, which is true.

What to do with a big haul

The usual problem is four pounds of fruit and no plan.

Freeze first, decide later

Open-freeze on trays, then bag. Blackberries freeze better than almost any other soft fruit and lose very little.

Bramble jelly

Sieved, so no pips. The classic use, and it sets readily — blackberries have decent pectin, especially when a proportion of the fruit is slightly under-ripe.

With apple

The traditional pairing is not sentimental. Apple supplies pectin and body, blackberry supplies flavour and colour, and the combination sets better than either alone.

Blackberry vinegar

Steeped in vinegar, strained, sweetened. Traditional British, keeps for a year, and excellent in a dressing or over pork.

Cordial

Simmered, strained and sweetened. A good use for the later, sharper fruit that is not worth eating raw.

In the kitchen

Blackberries hold their shape better than raspberries and worse than blueberries. In a crumble they collapse into the juice; in a pie they flood the pastry unless thickened with a little cornflour or combined with apple.

They take strongly to warm spice and to bay. A blackberry compote with a bay leaf in it is a genuinely surprising thing and the bay is not a gimmick — the two share aromatic compounds.

For anything where seeds matter, sieve. Blackberry pips are hard and numerous and they are the reason bramble jelly is more traditional than bramble jam.

Common questions