Strawberries appeared at area farmers markets at the very beginning of June, making a splash of scarlet among the green vegetables and plants, two weeks earlier than usual this year.
Connie Gillen of Sunset Farm in Amherst credited the late-May heat wave with bringing them along fast. It also seems to have made them sweeter and more succulent.
Local strawberries are still with us, the vanguard of a berry season with blueberries arriving in July, raspberries, blackberries and gooseberries at the end of that month and on into August, with cranberries bringing up the rearguard at the end of September and staying with us until Thanksgiving.
Writing of strawberries William Butler, a 17th-century English clergyman, said “Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did.”
But all local berries have their moments.
Soon the strawberries will be behind us, and we will be thrilling to the dusky bloom of blueberries and their juicy splotches in pancakes and muffins.
After that we will be in thrall to the hints of spice and flowers that perfume raspberries.
Then there’s the hunter-gatherer joy of reaching for the biggest, shiniest wild blackberries or the luxurious contemplation of the fatter cultivated kind.
The wild woodland strawberries — which were the only ones we had until late-18th century botanists crossed European with American varieties — were emblematic of the Virgin since flowers and fruit appear at the same time, and the triple leaves symbolized the Trinity.
Both blueberries and raspberries will grow as far north as the Arctic Circle, and northern varieties are often considered best. Maine, for example, gets accolades for the best wild blueberries. They even grow in Alaska, and in his book “Food,” Waverley Root writes of Alaskan red-backed voles who are “so partial to this fruit that most of them have blue teeth during the berry season.”
In the kitchen, berries are adaptable. Many of them can be used in the same basic recipes.
You can pair a sponge cake equally brilliantly with strawberries, raspberries, blackberries or blueberries, or you can use blueberries and either strawberries or raspberries on a white-iced cake to celebrate July 4 with patriotic colors.
You can cook raspberries, blackberries, or blueberries under your favorite cobbler or crisp topping, and if you have access to the much less common gooseberries or black currants, you can use these, too.
Blueberry muffins have a special place in our hearts, but you can switch in raspberries or blackberries whenever you have them.
Another characteristic of berries is that while they all have their own lovely and distinctive tastes, many of them have flavor partners that make them sing with operatic intensity.
Strawberries and rhubarb are a well-known example. Perhaps their pairing was devised by thrifty folk trying to stretch expensive strawberries with cheap rhubarb, but together they taste of more than the sum of the parts.
Raspberry and peaches also enhance each other. Raspberry sauce is a classic component of Peach Melba. More simply, raspberries scattered over sliced peaches and served with cream or ice cream taste amazing.
Blackberries and apples are another perfect pairing. Mixed in more or less equal amounts in pies, crisps and jam they are delicious.
All these partnerships involve berries and fruits that are ripe at the same time and in the same place. Not so the blueberries — a northern berry — and limes, the citrus fruit that hates cold so much that in Florida it grows only in the hot southernmost tip of the peninsula.
But a grating of lime zest gives blueberry muffins an extra lift, and lime-flavored yogurt teams wonderfully with blueberries for breakfast or dessert.
Nuts are yet another flavor partner to berries. Both hazelnuts and almonds are traditional choices with raspberries in European pastries. Walnuts often appear in blueberry breads and muffins. Almonds team with blueberries to make a superlative blueberry pie in Wales.