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Ravishing Raspberry

© Audrey Stallsmith

Agathya Mikhailovna, her face heated and angry, her hair untidy, and her thin arms bare to the elbows, was swaying the preserving pan in a circular motion over the charcoal stove, looking darkly at the raspberries and devoutly hoping they would stick and not cook properly. The Princess, conscious that Agathya Mikhailovna's wrath must be chiefly directed against her, as the person responsible for the raspberry jam making, tried to appear to be absorbed in other things and not interested in the raspberries, talking of other matters, but cast stealthy glances in the direction of the stove.
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

It's a pity that the term "raspberry" has come to stand for "a derisive or contemptuous sound." For raspberries are one of the most delectable fruits available. I don't often see them on the produce shelves of supermarkets, though. And, when I do, they tend to be prohibitively expensive.

Raspberries have to be dead ripe to be sweet. Ripe, of course, means "soft," and soft fruit doesn't travel well. So you're probably most likely to find them at farmers' markets--or in your own back yard! Black raspberries grew wild on our farm when I was a child. But, with scads of birds and five siblings competing for the bounty, I didn't see too many of them back then either. (Sigh.) Fortunately, we do have a few more heavily producing "tame" bushes now.

The raspberry's Latin name "rubus" means "red," since that seems to have been the most prevalent type in Europe. Gerard speaks of the berries ripening in autumn, while many of the modern red varieties bear an earlier crop as well. "Raspberries," as Louise Beebe Wilder writes in A Fragrant Path, "are ripening their rosy thimbles before Strawberries have quite gone over and, almost, this exquisite berry, which Thoreau called the most innocent and simple of fruits, makes us forget our delight in the vivacious first fruit of the year."

The European red raspberry is still, as in Gerard's time, called rubus idaeus "of the mountaine Ida (in Greece) on which it groweth." He also knew the plant as raspis, framboise, and hinde-berry. The hardier U.S. reds are derived from rubus strigosus, a type whose name bears tribute to its "stiff bristles."

The frequency with which raspberries are mentioned in Russian novels bears testimony to their ruggedness. Red and yellow varieties, the toughest and most prolific, stand erect. The black (occidentalis or "western") and purple (neglectus or "overlooked") types, more vulnerable to weather and disease, arch and trail. According to folklore, persons passed under those arches might be miraculously healed of such various ailments as blackheads, boils, hernias, and rheumatism-not to mention being protected from evil spells!

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