Rubus idaeus and other Rubus spp, a fruiting plant of which there are many varieties, grows wild in all the cooler regions of the northern hemisphere, and in some southern parts. The genus also includes the blackberry, cloudberry, dewberry, and salmonberry, and is part of the rose family.
Both raspberries and blackberries can be any colour from white through yellow, orange, pink, red, and purple to black, the difference between being one of structure. The fruit, though called berry, is technically an etaerio of druplets (a cluster of small fruits with stones). The etaerio grows from a core called a receptacle. When a blackberry is picked the receptacle remains inside the etaerio. When a raspberry is picked the etaerio comes away from the receptacle, which remains on the plant as an obvious white, conical structure. The absence of a core in the picked fruit makes raspberries softer and juicier to eat than blackberries.
The first people known to have cultivated raspberries were the ancient Greeks. Writing of them in the 1st century ad, the Roman writer Pliny the Elder explains that they called the raspberry idaeus because it grew thickly on the slopes of Mount Ida. (There are two mountains of this name, one in Crete and the other in Asia Minor, both still overgrown with wild raspberries.)
The Greek account differs slightly, according to Leclerc (1925), who describes it thus. Raspberries used all to be white, but one day, when the god Jupiter, still a child, was making the mountains resound with the echos of his furious screams (‘à rendre sourds les Corybantes eux-même’, comments Leclerc), the Nymph Ida, daughter of Mélissos, King of Crete, wished to pick him a raspberry to appease him. She scratched her breast on the spines of the shrub, staining the fruits a bright red for evermore. For this reason, raspberries are red, and the place where they grow called Ida.
R. idaeus is the modern botanical name of the chief species of both the wild and cultivated raspberry. The old English name for raspberry was ‘raspis’. Its origin is obscure, but thought to be connected with the rough, slightly hairy, and thus ‘rasping’ surface of a raspberry, compared with the shiny, smooth blackberry. Another old name was ‘hindberry’, given because the fruit was eaten by deer. The common German and Danish names are forms of the same word.
The common European wild raspberry has a distribution which extends well to the north of the Arctic Circle, and grows also in W. and N. Asia. (Wild plants of this species in America are not native, but escapees from cultivation.) There are red, yellow, and white forms. The flavour of some wild varieties is outstanding, so ‘canes’ (cuttings with a piece of root) are often taken from wild plants and transferred to gardens.
Wild raspberries are abundant in N. India and the Himalayas. Many species are very dark red or black. One of the most common is the Mysore (or hill) raspberry, R. niveus, a native of Burma and India, which is grown in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa, and is the only member of the Rubus family which has been successfully grown in Florida. The small fruits, black when ripe, are covered in a fine white bloom.
Wild American species include R. strigosus, of wide occurrence and quite similar to R. idaeus. Most kinds are red. It has no common name more specific than ‘wild red raspberry’.
In the eastern USA and Canada R. occidentalis, the black raspberry, is common. This is usually black, though yellow and red forms exist. It is more acid than most raspberries, which makes it particularly good for cooking.
The paler, often orange salmonberry, R. spectabilis, is named not because of its colour but because American Indians in the north-west often ate it with salmon roe.
Modern cultivated raspberries in Europe are mainly varieties of R. idaeus, often crossed with other species to improve yield and disease resistance. In N. America, cultivated raspberries include R. idaeus, R. strigosus (for red raspberries), R. occidentalis (for black raspberries), and hybrids between these and others.
The climate in parts of Scotland is ideal for raspberries and it is there that some of the finest crops (90% of which are eaten in Britain) are grown.
Raspberries and blackberries are to some extent interfertile, and hybrids exist. The best known of these is the loganberry. In 1881 Judge J. H. Logan of Santa Cruz, California, discovered this plant growing in his garden. It was an accidental cross between one of his own raspberries and a wild blackberry outside the fence. Loganberries are dark red and of a good size. The plants yield well, and the fruits are canned in large quantities.
Hybrids of similar parentage but much more recent origin are the Tayberry and Tummelberry, each named for a river in the east of Scotland.
Other recent attempts to achieve superior hybrids had already produced the Boysenberry and the Youngberry, both called after their inventors. The Youngberry is fairly good, with a large, deep red, sweet fruit. There is also a cross between the Youngberry and the loganberry: the ollalie.
Raspberries have inspired flights of fancy in haute cuisine, most often in the guise of syrups and sauces used as an accompaniment to other fruits such as pears and figs. Raspberry sauce is an important ingredient in peach Melba (see peach). A more sober English alliance goes back to the 18th century, when ‘creams’ enriched with eggs and tinted pink with the fruit were a characteristic sweet dish.
Raspberry vinegar is one of the most popular flavoured vinegars. In Yorkshire, it used to be served with Yorkshire pudding, after the meat.
Alan Davidson was a distinguished author and publisher, and one of the world's best-known writers on fish and fish cookery. In 1975 he retired early from the diplomatic service—after serving in, among other places, Washington, Egypt, Tunisia, and Laos, where he was British Ambassador—to pursue a fruitful second career as a food historian and food writer extraordinaire. Among his popular books are Seafood of South-East Asia, North Atlantic Seafood, and Mediterranean Seafood. In 2003, shortly before his death, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize for his contribution to European culture.
Leclerc, Henri (1925), Les Fruits de France, Paris.
