At this season’s first Fireside Feasts historic cooking workshop
a couple of weeks ago out at Wyckoff, I was asked if mulberries
were ever used in dishes of centuries past. The person who posed
the question was Dave Cook of EatingInTranslation.com. Seems
he’d found mulberries growing on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
I told him that I hadn’t necessarily noticed any receipts for using
mulberries, but that I hadn’t really looked. I assured him, however,
that I would definitely investigate the matter. Of course, soon after
I began noting numerous references to the illustrious mulberry.
According to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America,
there are three types of mulberries: white; red; and black. Now these
names refer not to the color of the berries, but to the bud-scale colors
of each species in winter. The white, a native of Asia, was introduced
to this continent in colonial times. It is usually eaten dried. The red
is native to this country, in fact to our area, but it was mostly only
utilized by the Native Americans. The black mulberry, also a native
of Asia, came here via Europe. It only grows in the Pacific Northwest.
Mulberries are rather fragile and highly perishable, and so they’re
not really suitable as market goods on a grand scale. They’re best
purchased (and eaten) locally.
I came across receipts for using mulberries in two different historic
cookbooks. There’s one for preserving mulberries in Amelia Simmons’
American Cookery (1796). Another can be found in The Kentucky
Housewife (1839), by Mrs. Lettice Bryan. I gather it’s for mulberry
shrub (a beverage).
In the recent issue of Past Master News there’s a reprint of an ad
published in The Pennsylvania Gazette on November 17, 1768.
It gave details on 27 acres for sale near Philadelphia “with a good
dwelling house, two stories high…a good barn and stables…” and
“a fine orchard just in its prime, and abundance of other fruit trees,
such as cherries of many kinds, peaches, mulberries….” It must’ve
been a lovely piece of property.
Finnish botanist Peter Kalm toured parts of North America studying
flora and fauna on behalf of the Swedish Academy in 1750. In his
writings of his travels, he mentions mulberry trees several times.
He noted where he saw them and when they bloomed, but he also
inquired as to why they weren’t used to support a silk industry.
The answer, of course, was that cultivating other fiber-producing
plants, such as flax, hemp, and cotton, was much more feasible
(and profitable!).
And then there’s the childhood nursery rhyme and game:
“Here we go ’round the mulberry bush,
The mulberry bush, the mulberry bush,
Here we go ’round the mulberry bush,
So early in the morning.”
(despite the fact that mulberries grow on trees, not bushes)
Well, that’s my report on all things mulberry.
For now. The quest shall continue!
