Delicious Goo - How to make Yew Jam
Endangered by History
The yew-tree is a highly poisonous tree and endangered to most parts of europe due to the once desired wood. It’s needles are green over the whole year and it can grow in dark parts of forests unlike most other trees. The hard but stretchy wood was used to craft longbows during the Middle Ages. Today it is found as a decorative tree in parks and mostly scattered, due to anthropogenic overexploitation in forests all over Europe, Scandinavia and the Middle East. Nature thanks you if you spread the seeds after eating the fruit.
Toxicity
Nearly every part of the tree is poisonous to humans but also pets and birds. Already 50g of the needles can be lethal to humans and intoxication can occure within 60 minutes. Horses can even die within minutes of eating a few branches. The only non-toxic part are the red berries of the feminine yew-tree (The male tree does not have berries). Signs of intoxication are heart failure and respiratory paralysis and leave, if survived, liver damage. For risks and side effects please contact your doctor or pharmacist
Preparing a Delicacy
After I found and collected about 500g, about 1000 of these inconspicuous red fruit it was time to remove the little seeds in the middle. To remove the seed I used the tooth of a fork and pressed out the kernel at the small grey dot where it meets its casing, the aril. The Object used shouldn’t be too sharp to damage the seed e.g. a toothpick. Damaging the aril will set a droplet of the juice free which is very greasy. Smaller fruit often don’t have a wide enough opening for the seed to be pressed out.
Squashing the aril is often inevitable. Having a towel next to you can be a good way to clean your fingers because its difficult to keep working with slippery fingers. The berry-jam ratio is nearly 1:1 due to the extreme sweetness of the berries.
Completion
After finishing the gutting (which can take several hours) just put the pulp in a small pot with some water. The water is added to smush the berrys. The consistency reminds of raw egg white, very gooey, and it can take a while until the pieces are small enough. I used the bottom side of a cup because I didn’d have a smasher but it worked very well. I added a two tablespoons of sugar for a better consistency and let the water evaporate by letting it cook. While cooking the mass builds foam like over boiling milk.
When I had the original volume of the berries I filled the jam in a clean glass and sealed it as soon no more steam rose from the top.
As seen in the picture the consistency is very gooey. Once cooled it is even worse than raw egg white and might take a little effort to seperate from the rest of the jam. Overall from gathering to bottling it took me about 3 hours of work for an amount of about 350g of jam (500-seeds).
Taste
The taste of the berries and jam is not very unique but the sweetness is not like the common sweetness we from jam or most fruit. It was like the mild sweetness of a banana. The consistency is unique and is not for everyone but lets you keep the taste for a while. The jam is very fruity but not sour like other berries or fruit. The flavor still is indistinguishable and at least a once in a lifetime experience.
Conclusion
The jam is work-intensive but also very delicious. For someone who likes to create new recepies, experiment with new flavors or just to gather and eat the things nature provides it’s recommendable.
