Feeling Fruity Why Not Try the Lesser Know Fruit the Tayberry
What happens when you put a blackberry and a raspberry together? Thanks to Scottish botanists, we now know that the answer is the tayberry. This berry is a very large, dark reddish to purple berry.
Originally cultivated in 1962 by David Mason and David Jennings of the Scottish Crops Research Institute, Invergowrie, Scotland the tayberry is a wonderful cross-involving a raspberry and a blackberry. It is a summer berry usual baring fruit in the months of July and August and is rather delicious both cooked and eaten fresh of the cultivated shrub in the genus Rubus of the family Rosaceae.
It looks and smells like a blackberry; but just one bite reveals the difference. There is a slight tartness to the tayberry, which is both welcome and unexpected.
A tayberry makes a great pie, which is a wonderful change of pace and is welcome at any late summer picnic. You can make tayberries into a deliciously tart-sweet jam, which makes a great sandwich or toast topping.
Add tayberries to your bowl of ice cream or you may even enjoy some in a fruit salad or in jello salad recipes. Use them as you would any other fruit for example being, in cereal or with cool whip. There are many ways that you can enjoy it even if it is eaten by itself.
Tayberries are also used to make a wine. The wine features a brilliant ruby red color and a taste with just the right amounts of sweetness and tartness. It makes a great pairing with strong cheeses, red meat, and game. The wine makes a great gift and at only about $15 a bottle, a very affordable one as well.
The tayberry is not just rich in flavor, but has a lot of health benefits to offer. These two-in-one fruits contain a lot of vitamin C and bioflavonoids as well as being a good source of folate and fiber. The tayberry fruit and the leaves are a good home remedy for diarrhea.
There is another old home remedy and that is to chew on the leaves to help cure bleeding gums. They say that they have faithfully adopted this in Scotland over 2000 years ago. It is still common today as well.
Tayberry can be used for many things from home remedies to food and wine. Definitely a different type of fruit and surely delicious you will be amazed at how many things you can make with it. Although tart in nature, many have used it to make pies, jams, and pudding. Sure there is a lot more that you can find in such an exotic fruit. It is really only limited by your imagination.