Once upon a time, oh best-beloved, you would have found this little fruit in many Australasian gardens. They probably came to us directly from South or Central America, as a variety of other odd fruits or veggies did: guavas, tamarillos, feijoas, chokos…
I vaguely remember cape gooseberries as a child in the 1950s: an odd fruit in elderly ladies’ gardens—ladies who would have been born in the 1880s or even 1870s. The last time I saw them growing was back in the 1980s when my sister Jane and I were sharing an old wooden villa in Balmoral, Auckland. I found a cape gooseberry plant trailing over the ground in the back yard just beyond a horrible patch which had been asphalted over at some stage, overgrown and then roughly cleared when the house was repainted and let. It was appallingly bad soil but the little plant did astoundingly well and I managed to make a very small pot of jam from its berries. Mm-mm! Eaten raw they can taste sicky, especially if underripe. But the jam is out of this world! Combining cape gooseberries with sugar and heat seems to work some alchemy. The result is very aromatic indeed.
The picture above shows you what they look like: little yellowy-orange berries (about the size of a small cherry) with a gauzy cape. The plant is a low-growing, rather straggly bush. If the caped berries look strangely familiar this is because they are related to the ornamental plants known as “Chinese lanterns” (Physalis alkekengi, native to Asia), which you sometimes see in fancy florists’ shops. Cape gooseberries (Physalis peruviana) aren’t Asian but South American, originally from Peru and common in Ecuador, Bolivia and Colombia too. Like the more famous Central and South American exports potatoes and tomatoes, they belong to the plant family Solanaceae. If you’re familiar with Mexican food you’ll have heard of the tomatillo: it’s another member of the Physalis genus, being Physalis ixocarpa, and also has a little cape (technically the calyx).
You only have to look at the fruit to realise how it must have got its English name of “cape” gooseberry. The generally accepted explanation today seems to be that it’s “cape” because during the 19th century it was cultivated in South Africa, that is in the Cape Colony, as the English called it, but frankly one look at the fruit and the mind boggles! With that dear little cape round it? And something to bear in mind is that capes were common wear at the time the English first knew the fruit—a fact which none of the pundits appear to have grasped. (“Gooseberry” would be because it is a small berry with tiny seeds and they didn't have any other thing to compare it to.) It has several other names in the Americas: uchuva (Colombia), capuli (Peru), and uvilla or aguaymanto (Ecuador), for example, and golden berry, giant groundcherry or ground cherry, Peruvian groundcherry, Inca berry, Aztec berry in the U.S.
For a while during the 20th century tinned cape gooseberry jam was available to the English-speaking world. Certainly the English food writer Jane Grigson wrote as late as the early 1980s: “Nowadays, the cans are labelled Golden Berries. They taste well enough from tins, but this way you lose the beauty which is so important a part of the fruit, the orange-red [sic] berry glimmering through its dried out, gauzy calyx.” (Jane Grigson. Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book. Harmondsworth, England, Penguin, 1983 (First published London, Michael Joseph, 1982)). Well they’re not orange-red, they’re golden-orange: sometimes one wonders if Mrs Grigson had ever seen some of the fruit she wrote about! At that period cape gooseberries were already out of fashion in New Zealand: David Burton only listed them in his Delectable Fruits Cookery for New Zealanders (Auckland, Reed Methuen, 1985) under “Less Common Fruits” with a scant two paragraphs and no individual recipes. I did find a couple of photos of New Zealand jam labels (sadly undated, but perhaps as late as the 1970s), in a collection on Flickr called “New Zealand Product Label Collection”, for “Cape Gooseberry Jam”.
Nowadays you’ll find plenty of recipes for the jam online, but those ubiquitous commercial ads from the local supermarkets, which pop up first, cluttering the screen, whenever you look for more common foodstuffs, just don’t appear. Cape gooseberries have become a curiosity for the keen home gardener.
I’ve only got 4 recipes for using cape gooseberries in my database. (That’s 4 out of 6986!) But here they are, if you’re lucky enough to have an old-fashioned, well established garden which still contains a plant.
The oldest version of cape gooseberry jam that I’ve got is from an American missionary who worked in India in the second half of the 19th century. “Tipparee” or tipare is only one of the Indian names for cape gooseberries (ras bhari is another): they grow well there and some of the online recipes are by Indian food writers.
Tipparee Jam
Tipparees, or cape gooseberries, are also another fruit which is much neglected in this country. To many [in the U.S.] they are familiarly known as ground cherries. These are much prized in India, and they really are a fine fruit, which can be grown any place and will more than repay the little time spent in their cultivation. In India the seeds are sown annually. I think in this country it seeds itself for a few years at least, but I am sure better results would be brought about if the seeds were planted every spring.
This berry is unequaled for making jam. If any doubt it, buy ten cents' worth of seed next spring, plant it in your garden. Let the plants grow and spread and in the early fall make jam according to the following:
Husk the fruit and prick each berry. Do not add too much water, as the fruit is very juicy. Cook until fruit is tender, but not broken. For every cup of fruit allow a cup of sugar. Cook rapidly and not too much at a time. It finishes up very quickly.
A good plan is to cook only partially, turn onto platters, and expose to the sun as one does any other sun preserve.
Tipparees are fine for making pies and tarts.
Source: Mary Kennedy Core. The Khaki Kook Book: A Collection of a Hundred Cheap and Practical Recipes Mostly from Hindustan. [New York], Abingdon Press, [1917]
(This recipe formed the basis of the version I gave in Chapter 17, “The Wheel of Fate Turns”, in one of my Regency novels, Tamasha, or The Great Tamasha Cookbook and Family History, about an English family in India in the early 19th century.)
There are plenty of modern recipes for cape gooseberry jam online. As I say, I have made the jam, and I used the recipe from the Edmonds Cookery Book. The book is an example of the popular cookbooks of the 20th century which republished recipes over many decades: this recipe probably dates back much earlier than the dates of the two editions I’ve read it in. My 1968 copy includes these helpful general hints for jam making:
- Fruit should be partly cooked before sugar is added.
- Bring fruit to boiling point slowly to avoid burning.
- Always use a wooden spoon for stirring.
- When sugar is added, boil as rapidly as possible. Rapid boiling improves colour and flavour of jam.
- To test jam, put a little on a saucer. When cool, a skin should form on top.
- Jam jars must be sterilized and thoroughly dry.
- Put jam into warm jars and cover while hot.
Cape Gooseberry Jam
Boil 4 lbs [2 kg] prepared cape gooseberries and 2 teacups water together for 20 minutes. Add 4 lbs [2 kg] sugar. Boil 40 minutes. Test. Pour into sterilized jars. Cover.
Source: Edmonds Cookery Book. De luxe ed., [Christchurch, N.Z.], T.J. Edmonds Ltd., 1955 (1968 printing). Also in: De Luxe Edition, 15th printing, 1976. (First published as The Sure to Rise Cookery Book, 1908)
Here’s a recipe for a genuine Indian cape gooseberry chutney. I might try it if I had a lot of cape gooseberries to play around with, but frankly the jam is so good I’d have to force myself to sacrifice them! And be warned: when this author says “Hot”, hot is what it will be!
Tipare Or Cape Gooseberry Chutney
(Hot)
* 5 pounds cape gooseberries * 1 pound seeded raisins [or sultanas]
* 3/4 pound garlic * 3/4 pound mustard seed * 1 pound salt
* 2 1/2 cups brown sugar * 2 quarts vinegar
* 2 tablesp black pepper * 1 tablesp cayenne
Pound the mustard seeds. Make a syrup of salt, sugar and 1/2 quart vinegar. In another quart of vinegar cook the [cape] gooseberries with pepper, mustard seeds, cayenne, pounded garlic and raisins. Mix in the rest of the vinegar. Stir well and then cook to the proper consistency. Bottle and use after 5 to 6 months.
Source: Dharam Jit Singh. Classic Cooking from India. London, Arco, 1958. (Originally published: Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1956)
An unusual modern dessert recipe for an unusual fruit. A “clafoutis” is a French dessert dish in which an egg-based custard mixture is poured over fruit. The classic French example is a cherry clafoutis. The dish is traditionally baked in the oven, as here. The author is an Ecuadorian who has lived in Seattle and Austin in the US and in 2026 is based in Luxembourg. Her fascinating recipes reflect the food she grew up with, her mixed heritage and her later food discoveries plus a French influence from her husband’s side.
(Goldenberry or Physalis) Uvilla Clafoutis
“This Uvilla Clafoutis is light, custardy, and bursting with bright, slightly tangy fruit. It’s simple to make but feels effortlessly elegant. If you’ve never baked with uvillas—also known as aguaymanto, uchuva, golden berries, Cape gooseberries, groundcherry or physalis—, this is the perfect place to start! This French custard like cake dessert is given an Ecuadorian/Latin touch with the addition of uvillas…”
* 500 grams of uvillas, husks removed, washed well and dried
* 80 grams of all-purpose flour, sifted = 2.8 ounces or 2/3 cup
* 125 grams of sugar = 4.4 ounces or 5/8 cup
* 3 eggs * 250 ml milk = 1 cup + 2 tablesp * 1 tsp vanilla extract
* 1 tablesp lemon zest * 1 pinch of salt
1. Preheat the oven to 350F (175C).
2. Put the uvillas in a lightly greased round pie or tart mold (8-10 inches), you can also use a square mold. Sprinkle the fruit with about 1 tbs of sugar – save the rest of the sugar for later.
3. Sift the flour with salt.
4. In the blender combine the eggs, milk, sugar, vanilla extract, and lemon zest. Blend until all the ingredients are mixed.
5. Add the sifted flour with salt, you can add it all at once or in batches. Blend until you have a smooth liquid batter.
6. Pour the liquid custard batter over the uvillas.
7. Bake for about 35-40 mins at 350 F (175C) – it’s normal for the clafoutis to rise, especially around the edges while baking.
8. Serve it warm sprinkled with extra sugar on top.
–Servings: 6 to 8.
Source: Layla Pujol. Laylita's Recipes, [2006]
https://www.laylita.com/recipes/goldenberry-or-physalis-uvilla-clafoutis/
Well that’s it for the cape gooseberry, Physalis peruviana, in the 21st century! If you know the fruit I’d love to hear from you: feel free to email me at: katywiddop@gmail.com
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