I have found this wonderful fruit growing on our farm but I can't find any information by searching on the internet. Can someone help me figure out all the things I can do with it? I am already making a liqueur, and I and the neighbors have eaten some raw, but it's so lovely I would like to do everything with it.
My neighbors aren't very adventurous in preserving, etc. Tomatoes is about it.

I'm stumped; can't find out what it is. Is there an American near-equivalent we might be more familiar with?
Yrs, Robert

Decobabe - Isn't nature wonderful! Botanical investigation is an adventure! If possible ...please take a photo of cornogle to us. That will give us a start.

A presto!

Edit - Please send a photo of cornogle to us.

The normally reliable Hazan Garzanti translates corgnola (alt. corniola) as "cornel cherry" (alt. "cornelian cherry"). Most botanists consider the plant merely decorative, while conceding the fruit is edible. Some dictionaries out there equate the tree wi th the dogwood (taxonomic name: Cornus mas).

The best online results for preparing the fruit are searches based on "Cornelian cherry", as for example this one, which yields jams, not surprisingly.

Bill
Gazetteer of Italy jj

Bill! Tu sei un miracolo! It does look a lot like a dogwood! I was thinking Solomon's Seal, but a dogwood without a trunk is also apt.
Thank you. These things are delicious. The liqueur is started, tomorrow will be preserves. Come on over and try some.

What color are your fruits? I loved the site with the foto's from Florence
Looks a lot like what we call Giuggole, which the foto is a little lower down on the Florence page.
They look like olives but taste like little crab apples.

Judy Divina Cucina
Florence
Everyone should try being Italian at least once a day!!

Caution Judith though. I would not want you to poison yusself from Bill's identifications.

1. There's no guarantee that what is locally called "corgnola" is what would be called "corgnola" elsewhere and thus be what's in Hazan Garzanti.

2. Hazan Garzant i's translation may be wrong. Similarity of words is no guarantee of anything, and dictionaries -- I speak as a professional translator -- do make mistakes.
   To the extent of my knowledge of Italian and English, mind you, I've never caught HG out in any thing, and the dictionary has all the earmarks of a very good one. Still...

3. I was careful to say that only some dictionaries equated the cornel cherry with the dogwood (Cornus mas), although it does seem to be most of them.
   The cornel cherry is so metimes given as a different tree altogether, genus Prunus (plum family), to which the true cherry (Prunus cerasus) belongs.

Put that all together, it is still safest to get good pictures, that allow solid botanical identification, before eating the stuff.

Bill
Gazetteer of Italy

Judith, I totally agree with Bill. Take photos of the fruit and tree and bring a sample if possible to a botanist, perhaps Someone associated with the horticulture department of a university.

Diva the botanical site is great!

Not to worry. The local people eat them all the time. I picked them because an old lady told me they were much nicer than the wild plums. Nobody does anything with them, they just eat them raw. At Lago Trasimeno, the pits of corgnole were found in Etruscan and pre-Etruscan remains, and one site says they are used as a specific against dysenterical diarhea, which is always good to know.
I used cornelian cherry to look them up, found cornus mas, and then found hundreds of pages, and yes, that's what they are. It was the starting point I didn't have.
The best recipes are Ukraine and Turkish.

Decobabe - an excellent book for all Italian food products and cuisine is -

Dictionary of Italian Cuisine by Maureen B. Fant & Howard M. Isaccs

And as you say, trust the locals - we always ask before eating the mushrooms we pick. Porcini are in the woods now.

Bill & Patty Sutherland
Tuscan Women Cook
Montefollonico, Italy

Thanks Judy for that site...it's beautiful. My fruits are bright red to dark red. They are just now starting to fall off the branches.
It's astounding that although I posted this question at horticultural sites and at two Italian forums, this is where I got the answer, and from Chicago.

Probably are what people (in Tuscany) call
Corbezzola(e) or sorba(e).Like a big cherry, red-orange colour, granoulous skin ?
If that, in a great quantity are astringent.
Whit them you can do liqueur,marmaledes.

Sorbus (Sorbus aucuparia) is a different tree, and yes, you can do the same kinds of things with them. In general, all these odd trees of the -- very loosely -- apple/cherry family, you can makes jellies and liqueurs with. The people who've pushed it the furthest in the distillation department are the French, in the Vosges and Jura of eastern France mostly, although I was glad to read here a couple of months ago I think it was that in Northern Italy these fruit spirits are starting to take hold as well.

Among the berries that make for very good, and very different, liqueurs: sorbus, amelanchier, holly, hawthorn, quince, almond-fruit (as opposed to its pits which is what we usually think of as almonds), cornel cherry, cranberry, the European blueberry (mirtilla) -- in addition to the standard pear, raspberry, plum and greengage (poire, framboise, quetsch, mirabelle).

The Swiss also produce some of these, as do the Germans; I've been disappointed by the latter though, at least the highest-profile commercial brand available in Chicago: like drinking neutral grain spirits.

Bill
Gazetteer of Italy

I can report that in just two days of macerating in 190 proof alcohol, the fruits, corgnole, blackberry and wild plums, are all becoming pale and ghostlike as the alcohol becomes colored and hopefully flavored.
In a month I filter and then introduce sciroppa/spice, then they age 2 more months under corks. Natale, anyone?
The whole idea is to get something not deadly sweet.
But oh, for some framboise!

Judith, Last weekend, we had our first sip of this summers Strawberry Liqueur. I was a bit worried about it because the strawberry season at our local "pick your own" was not the best it could have been.
But I'm very pleased with the strong and clear strawberry flavor.
However, it IS too sweet. With some pectin it could be alcoholic strawberry jelly. Next year, I think I will cut back the sugar syrup a bit, and use glycerin to thicken if I need to.
For a not to sweet liqueur, my favorite recent batch is the Green Tea and Jasmine.

Deborah Horn
-----------------------------------
Marketing Solutions for Health Care

Producing something not deadly sweet is guaranteed by distilling rather than infusing, since all the sugar turns into alcohol; and that -- is, (a) a different recipe, since you start with no alcohol, just the fruit itself; (b) relatively, a lot of equipme nt; and (c) possibly a lot of laws.

Framboise (which is one of these colorless distillates) should be available somewhere in Umbria -- didn't Megan mention a place called Giò in Perugia where you could get maple syrup? Failing which, there's that place I saw in Rome between the Ottaviano metro stop and the Vatican, on the right-hand side of the major street you naturally take to walk there, which must be the Via Ottaviano itself, or, less likely in my recollection, the Via di Porta Angelica. There must also be several other places in Rome.

Bill
Gazetteer of Italy [

Looking at
http://www.csa.it/Cd-RITA-ITA/CD/schede~1.html
You can find something about Corniolo. Corbezzolo. sorbo.
But is in Italian !!!

Howard M. Isaccs who wrote the excellent food dictionary that Bill mentioned is a regular on the AOL Italy board. His posts are always full of great Italy information. He used to publish a small magazine about Italy, but stopped a couple of years ago.

Pauline from Slow Travelers

[This message was edited by David on August 26, 2002 at 04:24 PM.]

Pauline, again Howard's name pops up on SlowTrav. I think I'm going to have to e-mail him and invite him to visit us. I'm sure he would enjoy the quality of the discussion here so much more than AOL.

Deborah Horn
-----------------------------------
Marketing Solutions for Health Care