Of course it would be good with game, but can you imagine eating barberry jelly with corn-fed pork or with fat mutton?
The berries should be gathered before they are fully ripe and treated like currants, although the yield of juice is meagre. Add a little water and heat slowly. Strain and add "pound for pound" of sugar. Put in tiny glasses. Any one in search for a unique Christmas gift for an epicurean uncle would find barberry jelly fills the bill.
In Salem, Mass., I saw barberries for sale in the market. They looked mightily out of place along with pineapples, watermelons, grapes, peaches, Japanese plums, and other conventional market fruits.
BAYBERRIES
Two friends of mine, summering on Cape Ann, discovered there to their delight, a low shrub, growing in great profusion on the rocky hills. The foliage was of a rich green colour, of a leathery texture, and was possessed of an aromatic odour at once delightful and wholesome to their senses. They were seized with a great desire to take home with them a quantity of this plentiful foliage to make into pillows or to feed the fire on the hearth that they might inhale its fragrance, and be reminded of Cape Ann and the summer sea.
So they procured huge gunny sacks which they were at some pains to stuff to their utmost capacity. They have a snapshot of themselves, bent double under the weight of the great sacks. With the help of a friendly native they succeeded in transporting the burdens to the express office, and addressed them home. We cheerfully paid the expressman's charges at the home end, having been advised that the bags were coming, and carried them to the attic floor where they were to be spread to cure. But when the contents came tumbling out, its pent-up fragrance was familiar. Then was it possible those blessed geese had been spending their precious vacation days gathering bay berry leaves? It was even so, and we had paid nearly two dollars express on the bags—and our woods were full of it! What a laugh we had at their expense when they came to reimburse us.
The bayberry shrub is also called wax myrtle and it is easy to see why, when you find the berries in October. They are gray, almost white, and you see that each one is covered with tiny drops of wax that has oozed out of the berry and dried on its surface.
Bayberry is called candleberry, too, because of the use our great-grandmothers made of the wax. Bayberry dips have come into fashion again and people who make them skilfully find a ready sale for their product.