Cocktails with Fresh strawberries
Fresh strawberries are the red, aromatic edible fruit of the garden strawberry, Fragaria × ananassa, a cultivated hybrid grown worldwide.
Taste profile
Strongly aromatic, with a medium sweetness and low acidity; the flesh carries a soft, juicy body.
How it's used
Muddled to release pulp and aroma, it works as a featured flavour and a source of natural sweetness and red colour; the fruit is also halved or sliced whole as a decorative garnish. Ripe, firm berries are used, and the mild sweetness is often supported with a plain syrup.
Substitutes for Fresh strawberries
As a garnish, another attractive fresh red fruit stands in loosely, and the sweetness, colour and body can be rebalanced with syrup or other muddled soft fruit; but where a drink must taste specifically of fresh strawberry, nothing reproduces that aroma and no true substitute exists.
Often confused with
True berries and other soft red 'berries'
Despite the culinary name, a strawberry is an accessory/aggregate fruit — an enlarged receptacle with surface achenes — whereas botanical berries develop from a single ovary. The everyday grouping with raspberries, blueberries and the like is culinary, not botanical.
