Source material (in Polish): https://klaudynahebda.pl/deren-jadalny/
Dogwood – uses and properties + film
Dogwood is a somewhat forgotten plant, but if you believe online articles, the demand for it is growing every year: apparently in some regions of Poland, dogwood fruits are practically unattainable!
Perhaps it results from the properties of dogwood (high vitamin C content), perhaps from the returning trend of using our native products – when it comes to the content of vitamin C, dogwood, sea buckthorn or quince can easily embarrass lemons from the market 🙂
Edible dogwood (Cornus mas) and other edible dogwood
Dogwood (Cornus mas L.) is a plant from the dogwood family (who would have expected?) Native to Eurasia. Dogwood is a long-lived plant, it can live up to several hundred years. Dogwood was popular in Persia, where its fruit was prepared sweet and salty, and the Byzantines were also fond of it. Currently, dogwood fruits are used in the cuisines of Iran, Kakukaz, Georgian, Balkan (rumored to be distilled in Serbia alcohol similar to whiskey), Ukraine and Slovakia.
In Poland, it occurs mainly as an ornamental plant, in the 19th century it was often planted in palace gardens – this practice probably survived until the 20th century, because it can be found in local parks.
Dogwood was also known in Great Britain, where it was prepared in various ways (more on this later).
Here’s a note: I’m talking about dogwood! (Cornus mas). There are many decorative varieties available – in the video you can see, for example, two-colored leaves of ornamental dogwood – if you want fruit for jam etc., ask your garden shop for edible dogwood.
Japanese dogwood (Cornus kousa) is widespread in China and Japan, known in Poland simply as kousa dogwood: it is a shrub and a small tree, the fruit of which is also edible and slightly resembles lychee. I found a video for you on YouTube, showing this dogwood in its full glory (this is how dogwood begins in the middle of the video). Honestly, I have not tried the fruits of this dogwood, I use literature here – but I will try to bring it to the garden!
Swedish dogwood (Cornus suecica) has other edible fruits from the dogwood family – I haven’t tried them personally. They are said to be edible but tasteless. On the other hand, the Swedish dogwood shrub looks beautiful when it blooms!
In North America there is a creeping dogwood, which has tart fruit and was eaten by several Indian tribes – a bast of this dogwood was a component of Indian pipes. Another dogwood, also edible (similar to Swedish, apparently tasteless, but has a lot of pectin) is Canadian dogwood (Cornus canadiensis) – if you are interested, read more about Canadian dogwood here.
Nowadays in the US you can find dogwood (the same one I am showing you in the video right now) because it is planted in parks.
It is interesting to read the English-language blogs of “gatherers” who report that they have seen dogwood in the park again. One of the bloggers from the USA wrote: “We have a lot of it in the park, dogwood is on the ground and nobody picks it, unless some Iranian, Russian, Serb or other Slav passes by.”
You can see that the tradition of dogwood harvesting is associated with the East!
What do dogwood fruits look like and when to harvest them?
Attention! Now I am writing about edible dogwood, not other dogwoods 🙂 Dogwood fruits are intensely red, slightly reminiscent of cranberries – of course, a lot depends on the variety. Currently, there are various cultivated varieties (unfortunately I do not know what variety is the fruit I bought) – some are smaller, others are the size of olives, some are intensely red, others – when ripe, almost completely black. However, I think it is safe to assume that the typical dogwood fruit is soft, coral red, towards the maroon.
It looks a bit like a small olive and this combination is quite correct: just like an olive, it has a fairly large stone inside (it is difficult to pile it, because there is relatively little flesh). I am convinced that if dogwood were a more popular plant, varieties with larger fruits and smaller seeds would soon become common – maybe even such are already available in Poland, who knows?
How to collect dogwood?
Dogwood bears fruit at the turn of summer and autumn, but when harvested best, fully ripe fruits – it may happen that if you buy dogwood fruits, they will have different ripeness. As a curiosity: in Great Britain, the fruits that have fallen from the bush are considered fully ripe due to the weather (little sun).
Dogwood is best collected and used on an ongoing basis: my observations show that it is quite susceptible to mold, so it is worth keeping it in the refrigerator and in containers with air access. If you buy dogwood and you have a choice, I would advise you to buy one in cardboard containers (for raspberries), then it should be better transported.
What are the properties of dogwood?
Dogwood has properties somewhat similar to cranberries. First of all, it is rich in vitamin C (which, unfortunately, is largely destroyed by heat treatment), antioxidants. It aids digestion (hence, for example, dogwood jellies are made as an addition to fatty meats), and it works well on the urinary tract. And it’s tasty!
What does dogwood taste like?
My sister described the dogwood as “a little bit of a wild cherry” – indeed, there is a lot of truth to it. Dogwood fruit are slightly tart, slightly sour, slightly sweet. Much depends on the variety – the ones I bought were mostly very ripe and quite sweet, with practically unnoticeable bitterness. Tasty! Only ripe fruit is recommended for eating raw, because fruit that is still green or ripe may have a laxative effect. Basically the same as unripe cherries, so there is nothing strange about it.
Ways to use dogwood
When you say “dogwood” you have “tincture” at the back of your mind. Even if you don’t have it in the back of your head, there is a good chance that your culinary-conscious friends will ask: “What? Will you make a tincture? ”. Dogwood tincture is one of the tastiest, so I broke my resolution for it, which was: I will never-ever-make a-this-year tincture anymore, because I don’t need it anyway :). Well, it happens.
Ripe fruits are used for tinctures (some say they taste better when frozen, I haven’t tried them), for jams, juices, marmalades – they do not have to be over-transparent.
Another traditional use for dogwood is all kinds of jams. Dogwood has little pectin, you need to either add some pectin from the store, add a pear / apple / quince (or other fruit rich in pectin), cook it for a long time, or just accept that our preserves will not be gelled: – ).
Unripe fruits are sometimes treated like olives: by preparing them in a salty pickle (green olives are also pickled, unripe fruits). Łukasz Łuczaj writes in his book “Wild Kitchen” that in Poland unripe dogwood fruits were prepared in this form and sometimes even sold as more expensive olives.
I also found out about Victorian recipes for pickled dogwood and barberry: ripe fruit was used then. The fruit was first boiled, then poured over with brine and spices (including ginger) and marinated for several weeks. I also found a similar Persian recipe for dogwood in vinegar marinated with dried mint – I’m going to try it!
Dogwood is also made into juices, in Iran it is sold in dried form, it is added as an appetizer, for example, to meats or more substantial meals (dogwood improves digestion, so it is justified), it is also prepared for juice, similar to pomegranate juice and supposedly also a type of soup (something like cherry soup).
Dogwood – summary
Dogwood is an edible plant known since antiquity, especially in the Middle East. Nowadays it is often used in Persian and Southeast Slavic cuisine.
Dogwood has tasty fruit, similar to a cherry – we eat the fruit when it is fully ripe. The fruit can be sweet or salty, it has a lot of vitamin C and works well for the immune and urinary systems.
In fact, there is one problem with dogwood: it has a large pit and little flesh. It does not interfere with eating, but removing seeds, e.g. for jam, is quite time-consuming and laborious. You can do this by cutting the bottom of the fruit and “squeezing” the pit, or you can just strain the jam afterwards. The extreme way: don’t worry about the pits :-).
When you buy dogwood, you can get fruits of different hardness: then the more ripe ones can be eaten raw, added to tinctures, etc., and the smaller ones – to jams, or try to marinate them.
