Black Currants

When They’re Cooked, They’re So Good

THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO EAT black currants off the bush. But why? A sun-warmed berry has a raw herbal taste, as if it weren’t meant to be eaten. It’s much more tart than sweet, and it has a tannic bitterness; worse, the fruit flavor is overtaken by an herbal-cat pee one. Rub the leaves and you smell it. You might think of Sauvignon wine from poorly grown grapes. And yet cooking with sugar banishes the unpleasant flavors. The fruit flavors come forward and into balance with the herbal ones. The taste is strong, still tart, but gratifying. Black currants may make the best jam of all. And you can make sauce, jelly, an ice, a mousse, a clafoutis.

I’ve been growing black currants for 25 years. Some US states, not mine, prohibit planting them or any Ribes because they can carry white pine blister rust. Fortunately, some currant varieties are resistant. In northern Europe, including northwest Russia, black currants are so popular that breeders have created 1,200 varieties. I’ve grown just two, both Russian. Currently, I have the self-pollinating, variously spelled Minaj Smeriou, which resists white pine blister rust. Some North American growers like the Scottish varieties, including Ben Nevis and other Bens (they’re all named for mountains). Black currants aren’t hard to multiply; a low branch in contact with the soil will root itself. The grower Peter Hingston once told me that if you take cuttings of the previous year’s growth in March and put them in the fridge in a plastic bag, “They’ll root amazingly.” Midsummer isn’t the time to plant, but looking far ahead to next spring, a good US source of uncommon varieties of currants and other fruits is Whitman Farms in Oregon. (No online ordering. You have to call and place your order directly with Lucille Whitman.)

Black currant bushes are vigorous. In early spring when blueberries are hardly awakening, the buds of black currants are already green and swollen. In my garden, the berries ripen in mid-July and are at a peak for four or five days. Not just the black color but a slight softness shows they’re ready. When you sort through, you can pull off the few minor stems that remain; the small remnant of the flower isn’t a problem. (That’s a big contrast to gooseberries, which have to be topped and tailed one by one because the stems are thicker and cling and the withered flower gives a woody taste.) For jam and jelly, Ribes are conveniently high in pectin. What works for me for jam is 500 grams of fruit to 300 to 350 grams of sugar (60 to 70 percent sugar by weight) in a wide pot. The texture is right in about seven minutes. For flavor, minimal cooking is key (definitely don’t add water). When you run out of homemade jam, the commercial one is a big disappointment.

If baskets of black currants are scarce where you are, there’s always crème de cassis, the liqueur, for making Kir or, if you add Champagne, Kir royal. Denis Lagoute devised the first crème de cassis in Dijon in 1841, and the firm Lejay Lagoute still makes it. There are other makers, including Gabriel Boudier, also in Dijon, and a few small, much newer ones in North America. “Store your cassis in the fridge; it oxidizes quickly, so buying it by the half bottle is advised,” says the mixologist Jim Meehan in Meehan’s Bartenders Manual. For Kir, you need a fresh-tasting white wine; Burgundian Aligoté is classic. Add one part, or less, of crème de cassis to four parts of the wine. ●