We’ll tell you when a bottle in your cellar reaches its window, or an ingredient you cook with comes into season.
Preparing
Rotate to portrait
PAIR is designed to be held upright. Turn your phone back to portrait to keep going.
Thimbleberry
Rubus parviflorus · Berry
40 pairings
The thimbleberry is the bright scarlet, cap-shaped aggregate fruit of Rubus parviflorus, a soft, thornless bramble of North American woodland edges and mountain slopes. Built like a shallow, hollow raspberry from a cluster of small drupelets, it ripens from firm pink to a deep, velvety crimson and tastes intensely tart-sweet with a fragrant, jammy berry perfume. Too fragile to ship or store, it is almost never sold fresh and is prized above all for a celebrated wild jam of the Great Lakes and Pacific Northwest.
Picking a good onedrag
Whole, crimson, dryCrushed or fermenting
Soft, still wholeThe ordinary good basket — raw with cream, or straight into jam and syrup. A pale, sharp one is no less safe to eat, so send it to the pan.Use it today
ColourFully red but darkening, a drupelet or two going wine-dark
LiftSofter, the dome flattening where one fruit presses another
HollowHollow still open, rim wet at one edge, juice on the fingers
SmellSweeter and heavier, more cooked jam than fresh fruit
What to look for, from whole, crimson, dry to crushed or fermenting.
Keeping ittap a band
A domestic fridge holds it about 2× longer than the counter.
Humidity
90-95%
Damp air, dry fruit — never wash before storing, as free water on the drupelets is where grey mould starts. The number is raspberry's, borrowed for want of its own.
Airflow
Vented punnet, one layer
One shallow layer in a vented tub, chilled fast and never sealed. Piled deep this berry crushes under its own weight, and one mouldy fruit takes its neighbours.