Lingonberry

Vaccinium vitis-idaea

fruit

Small red berries 4 to 10 mm across, very tart, from a dwarf shrub of boreal heaths and forests, a cousin of the cranberry; almost always cooked and sweetened, as jam or sauce. They provide anthocyanins, quercetin and resveratrol.

Origin

Boreal forests of Northern Europe

Season (United States)

all year round · grows in your region

Preparation

Very sour raw, it is almost always cooked with sugar for ten minutes, into jam or compote — the classic side for game and Swedish meatballs; skin and seeds are eaten. Its skin is eaten, and that is where its polyphenols sit: worth keeping, then — but under running water, rubbing it, which is what takes off most of what settles there, organic or not.

Molecules

Pectins · Anthocyanins · Flavonols (quercetin) · Stilbenes (resveratrol)

Did you know?

In Sweden, meatballs are served with lingonberry jam; in Sweden, Finland and Norway, reindeer and elk with lingonberry sauce.