If You Read Nothing Else

A white bowl filled with round gooseberries, some pale green and some deep red, each still carrying its dry stem tip — Striped, firm berries that soften as they ripen.

Sour when firm, sweet when ripe. Good fibre and vitamin C.

Early fruit cooks. Late fruit is eaten fresh.

Pick it early and a gooseberry is hard and mouth-puckering. Let it ripen and it turns soft and honeyed. It feels like two quite different fruits from the same bush.

Known to botanists as Ribes uva-crispa.