Hawthorn Jelly
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Most people have never noticed that we have hawthorn berries growing in our area in Northwestern Ontario, Canada, which is a shame, because they produce an awesome jelly. Haws tend to hang in clusters, like mountain ash berries do. The haws themselves look like tiny apples, ripening from green or yellowish to red, while the hawthorn shrub sports numerous one to five inch thorns.

I’ve made Haw Jelly over the past few years and love it. Haw Jelly ties for first place with Mountain Ash Berry as my favourite jelly. The flavour is soft and somewhat like a pink haw cotton candy. Mmm, delicious.

As always, it’s important to make a correct identification before eating wild foods. Some good reference books include Euell Gibbons’ Stalking the Healthful Herbs, Foster and Duke’s Peterson Field Guides Eastern/Central Medicinal Plants and Herbs, and Peterson Field Guides Edible Wild Plants.

Finding recipes for Haw Jelly isn’t all that easy, though it is often made in Europe. Here’s the standard British Haw Recipe, this one from CeltNet:
  • 1 kg ripe hawthorn berries
  • 2 litres water
granulated sugar (400 grams for each 500 ml of haw juice OR 1-3/4 cups sugar for every two cups of haw juice)
  • Juice of 1 lemon
The recipe doesn’t explain why my haw jelly never quite thickens enough, though. Which is why I always find myself going back to the excellent reference book Stalking the Healthful Herbs by Euell Gibbons.

Here is Euell Gibbon’s Recipe for Hawthorn Jelly:

To make Haw Jelly, crush 3 pounds of the fruit, add 4 cups of water, bring it to a boil, cover the kettle and let it simmer for 10 minutes, then strain the juice through a jelly bag and discard the spent pulp, seeds, and skins. If red haws are not too ripe, they will furnish ample pectin for jelly making, but if they are very ripe, add 1 package powdered pectin to the strained juice. We felt our juice could stand more acid, so we added the juice of 2 lemons. We put just 4 cups of this juice in a very large saucepan and brought it to a boil, then added 7 cups of sugar and very soon after it came to a boil again, it showed a perfect jelly test.

I love Gibbon’s books and foraging recipes, however, I’ve never been able to bring myself to add 7 cups of sugar to 4 cups of juice and have so stuck with the modern standard of 3/4 sugar to 1 cup of fruit juice. But my recipe isn’t quite right because even though I cook it down for a long time, it never really does thicken into that jelly state.

My harvested haws range from partially ripe to ripe, so pectin may be the issue. Or maybe it’s the sugar. Continuing to tinker, next year I’ll pectinize the recipe, as well as bumping up the sugar amount to match that of the British recipe.

The haws I pick always produce wonderful jelly. However, that may not always be the case, as Gibbons notes that if you’re making jelly, you should taste the haws on the branch until you find a shrub that produces tasty rather than astringent fruit because the fruit flavour can vary dramatically from shrub to shrub. Not good for jelly, the astringent fruit is apparently just fine for medicinal purposes, which are impressive.

Foster and Duke’s Peterson Field Guides Eastern/Central Medicinal Plants and Herbs gives the following medicinal properties for haws:

Fruits and flowers famous in herbal folk medicine (American Indian, Chinese, European) as a heart tonic. Studies confirm use in hypertension with weak heart, angina pectoris, arteriosclerosis. Dilates coronary vessels, reducing blood pressure; acts as direct and mild heart tonic. Prolonged use necessary for efficacy. Tea or tincture used.

The book gives the following hawthorn warning:

Eye scratches from thorns can cause blindness. Contains heart-affecting compounds that may affect blood pressure and heart rate.

Haws are a little-known fruit in our locale, but they are fascinating nonetheless.

If you do decide to make some Haw Jelly, it’s important to know that unlike other wild fruits haws don’t produce abundant juice. So don’t get alarmed by the small amount you do get. It becomes all the more precious, because the resulting yummy jelly is well worth the time and effort. Just watch out for those thorns!


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Photo Credit: Plamen Radev

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