Ingredients · Fruit

Raspberry

Rubus idaeus · Rosaceae (rose family)

Raspberry
The dried fruit — distinct from raspberry leaf, which is a herbal ingredient with its own profile and no raspberry flavour whatsoever. The berry is sharp, perfumed and fragile: it brings the highest, brightest note in a berry blend, and it is the first thing to fade, so blends usually pair it with something more durable. Eight products carry one form or the other.

What it’s like, and how to use it

The partBerry
KindFruit
CaffeineCaffeine-free
Where it is fromEurope and northern Asia (native range)
TasteSharp, bright and perfumed; the highest note in a berry blend and the first to fade

How to use it

In berry infusions, hot and iced. Best cold-brewed, which keeps the perfume. Pairs with hibiscus for a tart pink cup. Rehydrates into a soft, seedy piece.

With food

Chocolate, especially dark. Cream. Lemon. Peach. Almond. Rose. Vanilla. Black pepper.

With spices

Vanilla. Rose. Lemon peel. Cardamom. Black pepper, sparingly.

With tea

Oolong and black tea. Hibiscus and rosehip. Green tea, iced. Rooibos.

Its story

Where it comes from

The European red raspberry is Rubus idaeus, a perennial with woody stems, native across Europe and northern Asia and growing wild as far north as latitude 70. World production reached 940,979 tonnes in 2023, led by Russia with 23 per cent. No lot origin named.

What happened

The raspberry carries a Greek mountain in its name. The classical name is the bramble of Mount Ida — Dioscorides tied the plant to Ida in the first century, and Linnaeus kept it when he named the species Rubus idaeus. The legend attached to it says raspberries were once white, and that the nymph Ida, nursing the infant Zeus on the mountain and picking berries to quiet him, pricked her breast on the thorns and turned the fruit red forever. The botany is quietly interesting too: a raspberry is an aggregate fruit, grown from the many separate carpels of one flower, each becoming a small drupelet, all of them held together in the shape everyone knows.

On the shelf with it

Every product it goes into.

Every ingredient in the shop

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