For most mayhaw lovers, the jelly is where it’s at. This traditional Southern fruit has long been admired for the delicious jelly it creates, and making it is no more difficult than any jelly. With only a few supplies and little time, you can concoct enough jelly in a day to last you all year long. However, if you have never done any canning before, be sure to completely and carefully sterilize all equipment (usually by submerging it in boiling water). If you have a jelly jar with a broken seal or bubbles on the surface, NEVER use it. Botulism is a potential fatal disease and often comes from improperly sealed containers.

Making Mayhaw Juice

The first step is creating mayhaw juice. You’ll need about a quart of mayhaw fruit, or about 1.2 pounds. If you can’t find them at your local grocery store, you may have to travel to a specialty store or outdoor market. It’s a lot of mayhaw fruit, but remember, you’ll be making about six jars of mayhaw jelly. Once you have your mayhaws, discard the spotted or perforated ones then wash the fruit in a colander. Place them in a saucepan and cover with about a quart of water. Boil covered the fruit for thirty minutes. Remove the fruit and strain it through a colander again.

After that, you need to strain the fruit through damp cheesecloth, which can be purchased at any baking store. You may have some particulates of the fruit come through the cheesecloth, but simply let that settle. Once you get done straining and squeezing, you should have about four cups of mayhaw juice, give or take.

Juice into Jelly

Once you have your mayhaw juice, pour it into a large saucepan and get it to a rolling boil. Add one box of pectin. Once it boils again, add 5.5 cups of sugar and then keep in on the stove until it boils for slightly over a minute. Take it off heat and then remove any white foam that collects at the surface. This could lead to trapped air, something you don’t want in jelly. While the jelly is still hot, pour into six small jelly jars. Be sure the jars are sterilized first. Once placed in the jars, immediately cover with jelly jar lids, ensuring the lids make even, solid seals around the jelly. When you finish, you’ll have six jars of jelly that will last all year long!

Introducing the Mayhaw

The mayhaw, once a staple food of the South, experienced a falling off in popularity within the fifty years. Primarily, this was caused by the loss of habitat. Since it thrives in moist, shaded areas, overdevelopment removed many mayhaw sources. However, this delicious fruit, similar in taste and texture to cranberries or small cherries, is making a huge comeback in produce circles.

Southern Tradition

Southern families would commonly go on mayhaw picking excursions, spending the day picking mayhaws from trees or even in boats along creek or river edges and then enjoying a picnic. One of the major uses of the fruit was mayhaw jelly, and families would pick enough so they could have this delicious jelly all year long. These excursions dwindled as mayhaw sources disappeared, but with the increasingly popularity of this fruit comes another wave of appreciation. In fact, communities in Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana have mayhaw festivals every year!

Growing Demand

Like anything in economics, when you have more demand than supply you should always invest and that’s what many farmers are realizing in the South. Awareness and demand for mayhaw fruit and jelly has increased dramatically in the last two decades, but the number of farms growing them has not kept up. The fruit and jelly sell for a premium price and are not difficult to grow, so many Southern farmers are establishing mayhaw farms, cultivating the fruit to grow on contained farms rather than wildly on creek sides or near swamps. When it was originally cultivated, farmers would pilot boats beneath mayhaw trees on rivers and then shake the branches. The small fruit would plop down into the boat, making it easy to collect. The fruit almost picked itself.

Getting to Know the Mayhaw

So what does the mayhaw look like? It is a small fruit, ripening to a half inch to slightly under an inch in diameter. Growing on trees that are hardy and long-lasting, these fruit typically ripen in May. The name comes from this, May being the time of year ideal for picking and “haw” comes from the hawthorn tree on which it grows.

By far the most popular way to enjoy mayhaws is through mayhaw jelly, a condiment popular in the South for centuries. Typically this fruit is enjoyed in processed form. Besides jelly, you can make syrup, jam, pie fillings, even wine. With its popularity growing, the uses abundant and the availability increasing, you can be sure you’ll be hearing more about the mayhaw very soon!

Mayhaw emerges from US swamps as cultivated fruit delicacy

* Bright red fruit traditionally made into jelly

* More orchards planted in US South as popularity grows

By Suzi Parker

EL DORADO, Ark., May 6 (Reuters) – Food lovers in the U.S. South, get ready for the mayhaw.

The small, bright red fruit that resembles a cherry is quickly becoming a sought-after delicacy in the region, where it has made its way from the swamp to the cultivated fields of commercial orchards in Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas.

El Dorado, a town 100 miles (161 km) south of Little Rock on the Louisiana state line, rolled out the red carpet for the mayhaw at the 20th Annual Mayhaw Festival and Bluegrass Jamboree this weekend.

Jay Helm, the festival’s chairman, said the event has gotten bigger every year, with people driving from all over to buy jelly made from the fruit.

Nurseries are offering more mayhaw trees to customers in stores and online, and cooks are using more mayhaws in sauces and desserts such as jelly squares, said P. Allen Smith, a lifestyle and gardening expert based in Little Rock.

“The mayhaw is stepping out in the limelight,” Smith said. “The interest in regional foods have helped with the mayhaw’s popularity.”

For the South, the mayhaw has cultural, historical and horticultural value.

Before the mayhaw was cultivated in backyard and commercial orchards, the only place it could be found was in backwoods wetlands and on swampy river banks. Some people still travel by boat in late winter looking for the mayhaw tree’s white blooms. Once spotted, the trees are tagged with orange tape. Harvesters then return during the spring rains.

“They shake the trees, and the fruit falls in the water,” said Elizabeth Eggleston, executive director of the El Dorado Historic Commission. “It’s gathered up in nets and put in buckets.

Eggleston’s family for decades has enjoyed mayhaw jelly, which is translucent pink in color. She remembers growing up eating the jelly served on warm biscuits and tea cakes.

With the mayhaw’s newfound popularity, the possibilities outside of jelly seem endless. Growers like Paul McLaughlin are producing everything from ice cream to wine, albeit in very small batches.

MORE ORCHARDS

McLaughlin started his mayhaw orchard outside El Dorado in 2003. It now features about 100 trees with several varieties like the Spectacular and the Royal Star, each with a different taste – some sweet, some more tart.

McLaughlin and some helpers shake the trees to harvest the fruit. Last spring, he sold 150 gallons (568 litres) of the fruit and numerous grafted seedlings to people wanting to start their own orchards.

“Once you taste the jelly you are sold,” McLaughlin said. “People immediately fall in love with the mayhaw. That’s why you’re seeing more orchards and people wanting trees for their own backyards.”

McLaughlin, a member of the Louisiana Mayhaw Association, hopes to create a similar group in Arkansas so that the mayhaw’s popularity will spread. Many Arkansans are still unaware that the fruit even exists, he said.

“We hope to change that as the festival gets bigger,” Eggleston said.

For weeks before the festival, volunteers make mayhaw jelly to sell for the benefit of the South Arkansas Historical Foundation. Last year, more than 700 jars were sold.

“You have to get here before noon to get a jar,” Eggleston said. “People buy it by the cases.”

The festival is held around the Newton House Museum, an antebellum house with mayhaw trees in the backyard, located just off the town’s quaint square. At the foundation offices next door, jelly jars sit in cases and the freezer is stocked full of frozen mayhaws.

Helm said when he moved to El Dorado from Oklahoma, the mayhaw was a mystery. At breakfast at the local diner each morning, the waitress put pre-packaged jelly on his table but gave other customers jelly from a jar kept behind the counter.

“I found out it was mayhaw jelly, but you had to be special to get it,’ he said.

After a few years, the jar suddenly appeared on his table.

“I knew then I had been accepted,” Helm said. (Additional reporting by Corrie MacLaggan; Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Eric Beech)