Strawberry
Britain’s best loved summer fruit – but how much do we actually know about the great British strawberry?
As we become more health aware, people are eating strawberries on their own without sugar, cream or ice cream and therefore the berries need to have fabulous flavour in their own right
Make the strawberry our national fruit say the great British public, but 97% can’t even name a single strawberry variety. These are the findings of a recent survey of 3,000 respondents commissioned by Sweet Eve strawberries, a new British variety.
Strawberries came out top to be our national fruit with over half of the votes, beating second choice apples which had just 20% of the votes. The red juicy fruits were even more popular when it came to associating a British fruit with summer - more than three quarters (78%) named strawberries.
However, less than 24% buy strawberries by variety and of those only one in ten could actually name a variety, with the remainder either stating British as their ‘variety’ of choice, or a supermarket brand or range. This suggests that very few people are actually aware of different strawberry varieties. Interestingly, varietal awareness of apples, second in the Sweet Eve poll, is much higher with over 90% of people able to name one or more apple varieties.
Respondents were also asked about how they normally eat strawberries and the majority of people said they added cream, ice-cream or chocolate to their berries. But few people (less than 15%) had tried them with more unusual ingredients such as balsamic vinegar, mascarpone cheese, cinnamon or lemon juice.
The results of this survey suggest that whilst strawberries are very popular and flavour is important to consumers (81% listed flavour as their main reason for buying strawberries), there is a limited amount of knowledge of the different flavours that can be achieved through trying different varieties or using different ingredient combinations.
Peter Vinson, master strawberry breeder, is driven by the desire to create strawberry varieties with a focus on flavour and said “Good flavour, as far as the consumer is concerned, is largely to do with high sugar, low acid and a good aroma. As we become more health aware, people are eating strawberries on their own without sugar, cream or ice cream and therefore the berries need to have fabulous flavour in their own right. The eating experience is increasingly important and this is what drove me forward when developing the Sweet Eve variety”.
Last year in Britain we bought around 250 million punnets of strawberries with over 75% of households buying them each season. Over half of all the strawberries we buy in Britain are produced here.
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