For the Love of Currants

Fyodor Petrovich Tolstoy’s beautiful drawing of red and white currants, from 1818, is remarkable for its precision and delicacy. Executed in gouache on brown paper, the drawing is simple, yet it is anything but plain. The brown paper creates a background that seems right out of nature, setting off the currants to radiant effect. By carefully highlighting this background and adding shimmering drops of dew, Tolstoy captures the berries’ translucence.

The artist was born in 1783 into an illustrious family. His father was head of the War Commissariat, and he himself became a naval cadet. But the young Tolstoy found the arts more appealing than the military. He studied under the painter Orest Kiprensky, renowned for his portrait of Pushkin, with whom Tolstoy himself was friendly. Although best known for his sculptural works, Tolstoy excelled at drawing from nature, as this work reveals. And although he was not a naturalist, he rendered his still lifes with accuracy and an intuitive sense of the natural world.

Russians have long enjoyed currants for their tart flavor and healthful properties. Medieval monks cultivated the red and black berries and brewed excellent kvas from them. The berries, which thrive in the cold Russian climate, offer a rich source of Vitamin C: red and white currants have 35-40 milligrams of Vitamin C per 100 grams, while black currants yield a whopping 70-180 mg. The red and white currants depicted in Tolstoy’s drawing actually grow on the same plant, Ribes rubrum — the white berries simply lack red pigmentation. These currants can be eaten fresh from the bush, but black currants need sugar to taste palatable.

The French are famous for cassis, a liqueur made from black currants, and for Bar-le-Duc jam made from red currants, but nowhere is the whole plant utilized as fully as in Russia. Knowing cooks layer fresh currant leaves with mushrooms and cucumbers when salting them, or when sousing Antonov apples. The plant’s leaves and tender young shoots are often dried to make an aromatic tea. Besoms of currant leaves are sometimes used instead of birch leaves to stimulate circulation in the traditional Russian banya.

For such an everyday fruit, the Russian smorodina is a source of surprising controversy. Two tropes in Russian folklore — the Smorodina River and the Kalina Bridge — bear the name of wild berries. In an online essay, Valentina Ponomareva explains that the great nineteenth-century lexicographer Vladimir Dal advanced two very different etymologies for smorodina. He placed the word under the dictionary entry for smorod, meaning “stench” or “stink” (smrad in contemporary Russian). But it also appears next to samorodny (“native”) as an alternative form of samorodnaya — a much more positive connotation.

Currant lovers abhor the idea that a negative attribute might have given currants their name. But whatever the actual etymology, these berries defined Russia’s landscape long before the monks cultivated them. In the old Russian epic tales known as byliny, it is the River Smorodina that separates life from death, marking the division between the real world and the world of the spirits. The bogatyrs in these tales often fought monsters on the river’s banks, and later folk tales associated the Smorodina with the site of the witch Baba Yaga’s little hut on chicken legs. Most striking is the claim in Efrem Filippov’s nineteenth-century Pantheon of Russian Sovereigns that the Moscow River was originally called the Smorodina. It was on the banks of this river, in 880, that Prince Oleg founded the settlement that evolved into Moscow, and the river itself was later renamed Moskva. By then the abundant currants on its banks had no doubt been cleared to build the fortress.

Tolstoy’s currants offer a glimpse into Russian history and folklore. Look for these tart berries at local markets, and eat them regularly if you can. You might just gain the strength of bogatyrs.

Black Currant Conserve

чёрная смородина с сахаром

I prefer dusky black currants to red or white currants. The Russians like to stir them with sugar and age them for several weeks to last through the winter and provide a much-needed dose of Vitamin C. Because the sugar content is so high, no refrigeration is necessary. You can serve this conserve with roasted meat (it’s especially nice with duck) or in a dish with tea.

The proportions to use are 1 part currants to 2 parts sugar (or less, to taste).

Pick the currants over, discarding any damaged ones. Wash them, drain well, then grind coarsely together with the sugar in a food processor. Pack into jars and let stand for the flavors to mellow for at least 1 month before eating.