As far back as Jerry Thomas’ iconic 1862 book, The Bar-Tender’s Guide, Raspberries have been finding their way into a variety of cocktails.
What started with the Brandy Punch and the Knickerbocker has progressed through the decades, allowing raspberries to add their sweet-tart nature to a variety of drinks.
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Whether you love them for their pink crimson colour or the fact that they will work with just about every spirit and a few liqueurs that you might not expect (mix them up with a little Campari and you’ll know what we mean), raspberries are the definition of versatile.
And Rubus idaeus, as the raspberry is known, belongs to the same botanical family as the rose and the blackberry. And if you think that’s interesting, here are a few more raspberry facts:
Raspberries are an excellent source of vitamin C, manganese and dietary fibre. They are a very good source of copper and a good source of vitamin K, pantothenic acid, biotin, vitamin E, magnesium, folate, omega-3 fatty acids and potassium.
Raspberries are ancient and they are thought to been eaten since prehistoric times, but only began to be cultivated in England and France in about the 1600s.
Although you may not see them often, raspberries can be red, purple, gold or black in colour. You’ll find that the gold ones are the sweetest of them all.
Unlike many fruits, unripe raspberries do not ripen after they have been picked. Instead, aim to pick them at their very best – when they are plump and juicy on the plant.
Astronomers searching for the building blocks of life sifted through thousands of signals from Sagittarius B2, a vast dust cloud at the centre of our galaxy. They failed to find evidence for amino acids, they did find a substance called ethyl formate, which smells like rum and is the chemical responsible for the flavour of raspberries.
