On a cold morning in early December 2011 I went for a short cycle ride out into the countryside to the west of Norwich and picked rosehips. There had been a couple of short frosts, so some of the rose hips were a bit soft but I picked them nonetheless. I set off for home with a full carrier bag, some scratches and my hands covered in orange gunk.

Rosehips

Back home, I made rosehip syrup. I cooked the hips whole in water then mashed them gently with a potato masher and simmered them for about 15 minutes. I then strained the mixture through a jelly bag to remove the seeds. I added sugar (an equal weight to the hips) to the strained juice and warmed it gently until the sugar was dissolved. I bottled the resulting syrup in hot, sterilised jars.

I’ve started to use the syrup as a sauce for vanilla icecream, a healthy cordial, diluted with water to taste (about five parts water to one part syrup) and – rather decadently – neat by the spoonful as a silky syrup. The taste is rich and sweet but tangy – in his own rosehip syrup recipe Hugh Fearley Whittingstall describes it as having a surprisingly tropical tang, with notes of lychee and mango.

Rosehip syrup is high in vitamin C (provided you don’t heat it too much), as well as vitamins A, D and E, and antioxidants. Rosehips were harvested in large quantities to make syrup between 1941 and the early 1950s, once supplies of citrus fruits were affected by the Second World War. According to the excellent “Flora Britannica” by Richard Mabey, annual harvests peaked at over 450 tons and the collectors, mainly children, were paid 3d per pound.

The rosehips I collected came from the Dog Rose, Rosa canina, but other roses have edible hips and some of the biggest come from the Japanese Rose, Rosa rugosa, which is often planted in large quantities in cities – look out for the large, usually dark pink, flowers in summer.

I haven’t tried making rosehip and apple jelly yet but perhaps I’ll have a go this autumn, along with some of the other rosehip recipes featured here.