Domestic Encyclopædia (1802)/Gooseberry

GOOSEBERRY, the Rough, or Fea-berry, Ribes grossularia, L. an indigenous shrub growing in woods and hedges, especially about Darlington, Durham; also, on old buildings and church-towers, whither it has probably been transplanted by birds. This useful bush flowers in April, and bears fruit in June or July, which, however, does not acquire its natural vinous flavour in this climate, till August or September.

Although gooseberries are generally eaten, or employed for culinary purposes, before they arrive at perfect maturity, yet being one of the most saccharine productions we possess, they might with more advantage be converted into wine. As each pound of the juice expressed from ripe berries requires only one ounce of soft sugar (whereas the ripest currants require double that quantity) to induce the vinous fermentation, a very excellent and wholesome domestic wine may be made at a trifling expence. After standing several years in bottles well corked, it becomes equal in quality to muscadel, or other sweet Italian wines. If the flower-buds of this shrub be added to a cask of any other flavourless wine, Bryant asserts (in his 1st volume of "Nutritive Plants," p. 245, German edition) that they impart to it the taste of genuine muscadine.

Wild gooseberries, however, are of a very inferior size to those cultivated in a rich garden soil, especially when improved by inoculation, or engrafting; in which state they frequently attain an uncommon size.

There is another species of this shrub growing wild about woods and hedges, in several places in Cambridgeshire, Oxfordshire, Norfolk, and the Isle of Wight. We allude to the Smooth Gooseberry, or Ribes uva-crispa, L. which can with difficulty be distinguished from the preceding species, either by the flower scales, or even by the smoothness of its berries. Mr. Robson assured Dr. Withering, that the seeds from the same plant will produce both rough and smooth gooseberries. The last-mentioned species, however, flowers somewhat later, thrives in almost every soil, and does not attain the size of the rough gooseberry: its yellow berries are transparent, juicy, and contain a great number of seeds.

Beside these, we met with another Linnæan species, or perhaps a variety of the former, called the Red-Gooseberry, or Ribes reclinatum, which grows wild in Germany, &c. has somewhat broader leaves than those before described, and produces a red or dark-purple fruit of a very sweet flavour. It thrives remarkably in a fat, light, and sandy clay: we therefore conclude that its berry would be eminently adapted to the preparation of domestic wines.

All the different gooseberries are wholesome fruit, but should not be eaten before they are perfectly ripe; nor is it proper to swallow their stones along with the juice; but the skin may, with probable advantage, be used by those who are accustomed to take large quantities at one time; in order to prevent flatulency. It is, however, founded on erroneous notions of their chemical properties, either to boil the unripe berries for sauces, or to convert them into domestic wines, which, though more cooling and refreshing, do not possess the delicate flavour, and rich saccharine quality, inherent only in ripe fruit.