Last week, I was shopping at the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market, and one of the vendors there was selling Queen Anne cherries. What are Queen Anne cherries? They are a sweet, light colored cherry, who also go by the name of Royal Ann(e). They are cherries that you can eat out of hand or cook with. You can find these cherries in both Michigan and Oregon. They are very similar in appearance and taste to Rainer cherries. In fact, it’s very hard to tell them apart, so much so that groceries have been known to label the lighter colored cherries based on the name that is more well known in their region.
You may recognize that Queen Anne name from the Christmas season. Although cherry season is far away from the Christmas season, Queen Anne cordial cherries are a popular item found for sale around that time. Queen Anne cherries are also popular in the making of maraschino cherries.
If you can’t find fresh queen anne cherries you might be able to find the canned version. Oregon Fruit Products makes them using the royal anne name. Check your local supermarket or you can purchase them from Amazon.
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Joared says:
July 26, 2011 at 5:45 pm (UTC -6)
Thanks for explaining the difference between Royal Anne and Ranier cherries as I was recently wondering and no one with whom I talked seemed to know. Glad to learn of Ann Arbor’s Farmer’s Market for when I next visit family living there.
Fruit trees « FutureWorld says:
August 4, 2011 at 5:03 am (UTC -6)
[...] the most impressive of all was a gigantic Royal Anne cherry tree – at least thirty feet tall, perfectly shaped (you can see it toward the right-hand side of [...]