Rosehip Syrup

the hedgerow syrup that wartime Britain made national policy: wild hips minced, steeped twice in boiling water, strained through a jelly bag against their irritant hairs, and boiled with sugar

Origin: England

From the journey of Rose.

When the Second World War closed the sea lanes and cut Britain off from oranges and lemons, the Ministry of Health turned to the hedgerow. Rosehips carry many times the vitamin C of citrus by weight, they grow wild on every lane and field margin in the country, and they cost nothing but labour; so from 1941 the County Herb Committees organised their collection as a national undertaking. Schoolchildren were sent out with sacks, Women's Institute members stripped the lanes by hand, collectors were paid by the pound, and hundreds of tonnes were gathered each autumn and sent to be processed into National Rose Hip Syrup, which was distributed to young children through welfare clinics. It is one of the very few occasions on which a wild-foraged plant became an instrument of government nutritional policy, and it lodged the flavour in British memory for two generations, as much a taste of childhood as cod liver oil and rather more welcome. The method has one non-negotiable step. Inside every hip, packed amongst the seeds, is a mass of fine stiff hairs which are a serious irritant and which generations of schoolboys used as itching powder; they must be strained out completely, and the double straining through a scalded jelly bag is not optional fastidiousness but the whole safety of the recipe.

Ingredients

  • 1 kg ripe wild rosehips, gathered after the first frosts
  • 3 litre water, in two lots of 1.5 litres
  • 500 g granulated sugar, approximately (use 350 g per 600 ml of strained juice; see method)

Method

  1. Pick over the hips, discarding stalks, leaves, and any that are soft or blemished, and rinse. Bring 1.5 litres of the water to a rolling boil in a large pan.
  2. Mince or coarsely chop the hips in a food processor and tip them straight into the boiling water. Bring back to the boil, take off the heat at once, and leave to stand for 15 minutes.
  3. Scald a jelly bag or a double thickness of muslin, suspend it over a bowl, and pour the pulp in. Let it drip until it stops, then set the juice aside and return the pulp to the pan with the second 1.5 litres of water. Bring to the boil, stand for 10 minutes, and strain again.
  4. Combine the two lots of juice and strain the whole quantity once more through a fresh scalded jelly bag or a coffee filter, so that the liquid runs perfectly clear.
  5. Measure the juice into a clean pan and boil to reduce it to about half. Add 350 g of sugar for every 600 ml of the reduced liquid, stir until dissolved, boil hard for 5 minutes, and pour into hot sterilised bottles. Seal at once.

Notes

The hips of Rosa rugosa, large and fleshy and common on coastal dunes and in car parks, give far more pulp for the labour than the small hips of the wild dog rose, and are perfectly good here. Never use hips from roadside verges heavy with traffic, or from any bush that may have been sprayed. Take two teaspoons a day as a tonic in the old manner, or pour the syrup over ice cream, porridge, rice pudding, and pancakes; dilute it with hot or cold water as a cordial; or use it in place of grenadine in a drink, which it resembles in colour and beats considerably in flavour. It freezes well in ice-cube trays if you would rather not bottle it.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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