It’s been a great year for the gooseberries. Our two bushes – one ‘Hinnonmaki Green’, the other ‘Hinnonmaki Red’ – have produced the largest crops we have ever had from them. Over 6kg from each. These dual purpose culinary and dessert types can be used when immature for cooking in pies, jams, sauces and chutneys, while the fully ripe fruit is sweet enough to be eaten straight from the bush. Originally bred in Finland these cultivars are reliably hardy and resistant to powdery mildew and have cropped reliably for us since we planted them seven years ago. In the case of the red, being thornless they also make for easy picking, unlike the green which bears the familiar needle-like thorns that lacerate your hands, however carefully you go.

Although the first to bear fruit in the vegetable garden, gooseberries have not always been our first fruit of choice for eating. Too many childhood memories of the pale green, seedy pulp floating in a bowl of curdled custard or evaporated milk and the disappointment of Nana’s buttery, sugary, shortcrust giving way to undersweetened (to my child’s palate, at least), sour and watery fruit. Gooseberry fool (gooseberries, Bird’s Custard and cream) was one of the first desserts I was taught to make in ‘O’ Level Home Economics but, by the time it had been carried home in Tupperware on a hot summer bus, it was not the most appetising of puddings and, with fears of an upset stomach, neither I nor the family could bring ourselves to eat it.