Fruit and beer.

For many people, the two concepts don’t belong together. For example, one of my ex-colleagues had a letter published in Viz which sneered at the whole concept of a “lager top” as being the Southern softy drink of shandy under a euphemistic name.

Funny though the letter was, I don’t think he was altogether right. OK, it’s a shame to spoil a decent ale by pouring half a pint of R. White’s into it. Snakebite destroys the lager, the cider, and half of your braincells at a stroke. And Guinness and blackcurrant is an abomination.

But there are plenty of respectable beers on the Continent which involve fruit in some way. Take Hoegaarden, for one. Wheat beer is nice enough in itself, but adding that Curaçao orange peel to the process gives the drink a zing which makes it perfect for sitting outside on a summer’s day.

The Belgians seem to be particularly big on fruit in beer. Kriek, the beer made with cherries, is probably the most famous instance of this.

Just now I've been drinking a bottle of framboise, or frambozenbier if you’re in Flanders rather than Wallonia; beer flavoured with raspberries. Like Hoegaarden, it’s a great drink for summer – it’s refreshing and has a pleasant zing to it which really helps take the heat off. (Pity it’s a bit on the pricey side, though on the other hand that does mean you’re less likely to gulp it down in industrial quantities and be totally wasted by dinnertime.)

The Germans do something very similar in Berlin, called Weiße mit Schuss. But in the German case they simply add raspberry syrup to the finished beer, whereas the Belgians use real raspberries in the brewing process. Nice though Weiße mit Schuss can be, it’s not got the bite that framboise has. It’s a bit stickier, too.

So the message seems to be: Don’t knock the idea of fruity beer until you’ve tried it; but if you’re going to do it, do it properly, with real fruit, not rubbish with additives and colourings.

Test your foodie knowledge with our quick quiz. Only five questions but quite difficult, we think. Have fun!

1. What is Bûche de Noël?
   1. A French Christmas recipe for a Yule log
   2. A well-known Swiss cookbook with recipes for Christmas
   3. A Canadian pastry traditionally made at Christmas
   4. A Belgian liqueur distilled from birch sap, traditionally drunk on Christmas Eve
2. What does au gratin mean?
   1. Served with a cheese sauce
   2. A dish sprinkled with cheese and/or breadcrumbs then browned on top
   3. A sandwich made French-style, like a croque, with the cheese on the outside
   4. Garnished with a roux-based cheese and parsley sauce
3. In culinary terms, what does marc mean?
   1. A joint of meat used only to provide flavour to a dish rather than for the meat itself
   2. A method of infusing fruit with alcohol in a technique similar to macerating
   3. A clear alcohol made from the pressed grapes after wine making
   4. It’s another word for cocotte (a small dish for baking individual soufflés etc)
4. Who wrote the book Ballymaloe Cookery Course first published in the UK in 2001?
   1. Donna Hay
   2. Delia Smith
   3. Darina Allen
   4. Jeanne Rankin
5. What is charcuterie?
   1. Prepared meat products (such as sausages, patés, hams, etc) made from any kind of animal
   2. Prepared meat products as above, but made from pork only
   3. Any kind of meat prepared according to French butchery techniques
   4. French salami-style sausage

Check the answers here

Here are the answers:

1. What is Bûche de Noël?
   1. A French Christmas recipe for a Yule log
   2. A well-known Swiss cookbook with recipes for Christmas
   3. A Canadian pastry traditionally made at Christmas
   4. A Belgian liqueur distilled from birch sap, traditionally drunk on Christmas Eve

   (You can find a great recipe for Bûche de Noël on Mike K-H’s New Freebooters blog)

2. What does au gratin mean?
   1. Served with a cheese sauce
   2. A dish sprinkled with cheese and/or breadcrumbs then browned on top
   3. A sandwich made French-style, like a croque, with the cheese on the outside
   4. Garnished with a roux-based cheese and parsley sauce
3. In culinary terms, what does marc mean?
   1. A joint of meat used only to provide flavour to a dish rather than for the meat itself
   2. A method of infusing fruit with alcohol in a technique similar to macerating
   3. A clear alcohol made from the pressed grapes after wine making
   4. It’s another word for cocotte (a small dish for baking individual soufflés etc)
4. Who wrote the book Ballymaloe Cookery Course first published in the UK in 2001?
   1. Donna Hay
   2. Delia Smith
   3. Darina Allen
   4. Jeanne Rankin
5. What is charcuterie?
   1. Prepared meat products (such as sausages, patés, hams, etc) made from any kind of animal
   2. Prepared meat products as above, but made from pork only
   3. Any kind of meat prepared according to French butchery techniques
   4. French salami-style sausage

   (I’ve always thought that charcuterie meant any kind of cold cut - predominantly pork, but not exclusively. In researching this question, I thought I might have been wrong all these years when I found that the glossary in The Conran Cookbook says that it’s specifically pork. But when I dug a little deeper I discovered that that’s a commonly held fallacy among English speakers, based on the over-simplified translation of charcutier as “pork butcher”.)

How did you get on?