Ingredients · Fruit

Bilberry

Vaccinium myrtillus · Ericaceae (heath family)

Bilberry
Europe's wild blueberry, and a genuinely different fruit from the cultivated kind. Bilberries carry their anthocyanins in the flesh as well as the skin, where a cultivated blueberry has them mostly in the skin — so a bilberry stains everything, tastes more intense, and turns a cup deep purple-red. They grow as single fruits rather than in clusters and are harvested wild rather than farmed, which is why they are never cheap. One product carries them.

What it’s like, and how to use it

The partBerry
KindFruit
CaffeineCaffeine-free
TasteMore intense and winey than a blueberry, with the colour running right through the flesh

How to use it

In berry infusions, where it colours a cup more strongly than blueberry does. Rehydrates small and intense. It stains — allow for it.

With food

Cream and custard. Lemon. Almond. Vanilla. Game. Pastry. Dark chocolate.

With spices

Vanilla. Cinnamon. Cardamom. Lemon peel.

With tea

Rooibos, where the colour shows. Black tea. Hibiscus and elderberry.

Its story

Where it comes from

Indigenous to nearly all European countries, absent only from Sardinia, Sicily, European Turkey, Crete, the Aegean Islands, Cyprus, Crimea and southern European Russia. They grow on acidic heaths, moorlands and open forest up to 2,350 metres. Our lot names no origin.

What happened

The bilberry has never been domesticated, and that is the whole story of it. Everything harvested is picked wild, from heaths and moorland and open forest, which is why it remains a seasonal, regional and expensive fruit while the blueberry — bred into a crop in New Jersey after 1910 — became a supermarket staple. Two closely related berries, one of which went through agriculture and one of which did not.

On the shelf with it

Every product it goes into.

Every ingredient in the shop

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