Lost Strawberries
At one time southerners shared a preference for juicier berries with an acid note complementing the sweetness. This sweet-sharp style of strawberry first emerged in the immediate wake of the Civil War when Charlestonian George Nunan crossed an Old Pine Stawberry with a Harris Seeding and created the Neunan’s Prolific—a variety that would dominate southern fields for a generation. A sport of Neunan’s Prolific producing larger fruit—Hoffman’s seedling—began supplanting it in the 1880s. These were heat tolerant varieties with some tolerance for boxcar shipping. In the early twentieth century and odd thing happened—strawberries with the touch of acid enhancing their sweetness were discovered to freeze better than sweet berries. Producers began to slot berries with these sorts as “freezers” rather than eat fresh. Whether they appeared in bags of frozen fruit or giving texture to strawberry ice cream, these strawberries enjoyed a brisk market.
In 1901 Mr. R. L. Cloud, a shipping agent of Independence, Louisiana determined that a less juicy, firmer version of the sweet-acid southern style berry had to be developed for railroad transport. He crossed the Hoffman with a very solid berry named the Pickerproof (so named because it was so solid it would not be bruised by pickers). Cloud’s name for his creation—The Klondike Strawberry—indicated that his intended market for the berry was the cold processing industry. Within nine years the Klondike became the dominant berry grown in the South. The Neunan’s disappeared from the face of the earth and the Hoffman’s survived in patches and as breeding stock (it too would vanish completely after World War II).
The Klondike is the earliest surviving of the lineage of southern crop strawberries. It is still cultivated for freezing in one section of northern Mexico. In the South from the 1920s through the 1960s, it was consumed fresh as well—old tastes for tart-and-sweet berries die hard in the region. It would hold its dominance as the #1 cultivar until 1937 when the smaller, more disease resistant, and firmer Blakemore supplanted it in fields in the upper South. One reason it overtook the Klondike was that it made more eye-appealing preserves when cooked and processed with pectin.
There is a problem with the Blakemore as a strawberry for making preserves—its lack of fragrance. What one desires when stripping the lid off strawberry preserves is that pulse of perfume spreading through the kitchen. I knew that odor growing up in the 1960s. There was a reason for that. A group of breeders in Maryland in the twentieth century concerning themselves with strawberry aromatics. creating the Narcissa, the Redstar, and the Pelican. These were varieties grown in the upper South. The Redstar in particular was the treasure of picking days in Maryland in the 1960s—the one that my mother rendered in preserves.
Alas—the interest in aromatics waned at the end of the twentieth century. While the varieties still survive in the USDA germplasm facilities, neither the classic southern sweet-sharp berries or the super aromatic berries are being grown for picking or processing in the United States.
Perhaps it is time to reclaim these treasures?