I used to buy a myrtilles yoghurt in Paris in the 1970s: it was readily available from the supermarket in the Place de la République. The taste? Incredibly aromatic, but delicate at the same time: out of this world!
Decades later my brother and I had a somewhat disjointed email discussion about “les myrtilles”: gee, you can’t get ’em in New Zealand, any more than you can in Australia.
But what are they?
It was painful, but I found out. They are NOT blueberries. Blueberry yoghurt is nothing like the yaourt myrtille of the 1970s. Blueberries, even the nicest, are tasteless by comparison. What the myrtille commune (Vaccinium myrtillus) is, folks, is the bilberry, a plant that grows wild in parts of Europe.
Bilberry, not blueberry
Never heard of it? I’m not surprised. I had read the word somewhere, but had no idea what it was. You will find an entry for it under “Bilberry” in Wikipedia, but in fact the most enlightening intel I found was in Wikipédia, the French version, under “Myrtille”. The picture there (above) tells a thousand words.
The French article tells us, alas, that today the name “myrtilles” is also applied to the North American blueberries: “À l’origine du nom et principalement, il s'agit de Vaccinium myrtillus, la myrtille commune, mais l’appellation peut également se rapporter à Vaccinium uliginosum, la myrtille des marais et à plusieurs espèces américaines dont certaines sont cultivées (Vaccinium caespitosum, Vaccinium corymbosum, Vaccinium angustifolium …)” (“Myrtille”, Wikipédia)
More on the bilberry
Bilberries and blueberries are in fact cousins: both species of Vaccinium. In the English-language Wikipedia we read: “Bilberries are a primarily Eurasian species of low-growing shrubs in the genus Vaccinium (family Ericaceae), bearing edible, dark blue berries. The species most often referred to is Vaccinium myrtillus L., but there are several other closely related species.”
The Wikipedia entry under “Blueberry” actually gave the best written help on distinguishing between the two fruits. If you look closely at their bottoms, as in the French picture of the two fruits, you can see that they are different: bilberries have “a smooth, circular outline at the end opposite the stalk, whereas blueberries retain persistent sepals there, leaving a rough, star-shaped pattern of five flaps.” They grow differently on their little bushes, too, and when cut into are different in colour: “Bilberries grow singly or in pairs rather than in clusters, as blueberries do, and blueberries have more evergreen leaves. Bilberries are dark in color, and usually appear near black with a slight shade of purple. … While blueberry fruit pulp is light green in color, bilberry is red or purple.” (“Bilberry”, Wikipedia)
Les myrtilles today
The only thing containing bilberries that I’ve seen in Australasia is the Bonne Maman jam that my brother bought in Whangarei, in northern New Zealand. It’s labelled as “Wild Blueberry Conserve”, and he had a story about it not being allowed to be called jam in these Antipodean parts because it hasn’t got enough sugar in it (sounds all too likely, yeah). I quite liked it, but I found it had too much food acid, which spoiled the delicacy of the berries.
The horse’s mouth
Having found out what les myrtilles are, I was able to consult an English-language culinary source from an expert: Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book (Harmondsworth, England, Penguin, 1983). Grigson has quite a long section on bilberries, reminiscing about holidays picking them wild in Scotland during World War II and telling us a long and possibly apocryphal Irish story, not terribly relevant; but like me, she found the true taste of myrtilles in France—except that I was an impoverished student who bought supermarket yogurts and she was a well-off lady traveller, motoring through obscure parts of the countryside and sampling the native delights. She gives you the gen on the French and English names for the fruit, too:
“Do not miss the chance of bilberries in France from the unfamiliarity of the names, which do vary a lot. If you have ever driven down the autoroutes, you will have seen notices for picnic and resting-places with loos, saying Aire de Somewhere or Other. Now aire was a threshing floor in a farmyard, and by extension an uncluttered open space or patch of ground. Bilberries which grow on such ground, in their different varieties, are therefore known as airelles. However, in general speech and in cookery books, my experience is that the commoner name is myrtilles (the botanical name is Vaccinium myrtillus).
“Other local names are abrêtier, vacier, raisin des bois, brimbelle in the Vosges …, and teint-vin—perhaps a reference to its use in ‘improving’ poor wine, and certainly an acknowledgement of its staining power. Our [English] names revolve round the blueness of the fruit—bilberry and blaeberry, of course, but less obviously whortleberry or hurtleberry, the latter from its resemblance to the dark blueish tone of a bruise, i.e. a hurt. In the south-west of England, the word picks up a w—whoam meaning home is another example. It was whortleberry for west-country Coleridge, even when he was in blaeberry Lakeland country.
“‘At my feet,
The whortle-berries are bedewed with spray
Dashed upwards by the furious waterfall.’”
Many thanks, Mrs Grigson! I’m not a fan of the Romantic poets in general, but I love that quotation. Here it is again, as a last, lingering homage to my unforgettable memories of real bilberry yoghurt:
