Phorage

Returned home from a walk with a bag of (ornamental) crab apples, the last of the elderberries, a few withered damsons and some of these - pheasant berries.

I recognised them when I saw  the dangling purple flowerheads of some ragged shrubs growing in the wilderness garden of an unoccupied house.  I recalled that the ripe berries are said to taste of caramel - and they do, but more specifically of the sticky syrup topping that went with an old-fashioned packet dessert called Carmelle, a childhood favourite  The caramel came in a little plastic sachet that my mother would let me squeeze into the bowl before she poured in the hot milk, mixed with the powder, before leaving it to set. My father liked this pud because it contained carageenan (from seaweed) as a jelling agent.

To my amazement I find you can still buy packets of Carmelle (for less than a pound) and there's even a blog entry all about it making it.

(For anyone interested pheasant berries grow on a not-uncommon garden shrub called  Leycesteria formosa or Himalayan honeysuckle., which was brought over by the Victorians. The berries are irresistible to birds -  for them the next best thing to packet puds.)

NB only the ripe purple berries taste nice, if unripe they are,  apparently, very bitter.