Sirop Ffrwythau'r Hydref (Autumn Fruit Syrup) is a traditional Welsh (Cymric) recipe for a classic drink or syrup made from autumn fruit and rose hips boiled down and blended with sugars and jaggery. The full recipe is presented here and I hope you enjoy this classic Welsh version of: Autumn Fruit Syrup (Sirop Ffrwythau'r Hydref).
(click this button to prevent the screen from sleeping so Cook Mode is 'ON')
English Translation
This is a slight twist on rose hip syrup due to the unusual conditions of October 2026. After a long hot summer, the rose hips were in profusion, but a warm and dry early autumn meant that those hips were bletting on the rose bushes. Now, in a way that's good as you can extract more of the pulp from the rose hips but it did mean that the softer rugosa rose hips were starting to rot.
Blackberries were still ripening well into October so I also picked ripe and semi-ripe blackberries to add to the syrup. The sloe harvest was smaller than normal, and the sloes were drying or rotting on their bushes. Still, after collecting enough sloes to make my customary sloe gin I had about 100g left over and as they add a significant depth of flavour I also added to the rose hip and blackberry mixture using haws as a backbone.
Ingredients:
1.5kg ripe rose hips
200g ripe or dark red blackberries
100g sloes
100g haws (optional)
3l boiling water
750ml boiling water
4 x 25g half balls of jaggery (optional, but adds to the flavour)
50g brown sugar
900g granulated sugar
Method:
Wash and clean the rose hips then chop coarsely with a knife. Combine in a large pan with the sloes and blackberries. Cover with 3l water then bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for about 60 minutes to soften the rose hips then take off the heat and set aside to infuse for 30 minutes.
Return to the heat and bring to a simmer then mash with a potato masher (this will extract more flavour and more of the pulp from all the fruit). Take off the heat and set aside to infuse for 30 minutes.
After this time, turn the mixture into a jelly bag or a colander lined with muslin and allow to drip through naturally (do not force through as this could force some of the irritant hairs in the hips into the drained liquid). When most of the liquid has drained through return the pulp to the saucepan, pour over 750ml boiling water then return the mixture to a boil, stir well then take off the heat and set aside to infuse for 10 minutes.
Pour the resultant mixture into a jelly bag or colander lined with muslin and again allow the liquid to drain through naturally. Discard the pulp then combine the two sets of liquid then pour into a clean jelly bag or colander lined with fresh muslin. Again allow to drain through naturally (do not press through). This will ensure that any irritant hairs have been eliminated.
Pour the resultant, strained, liquid into a clean saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and allow the volume of liquid to reduce to 1l. Stir in the sugars and heat gently, stirring, to dissolve. Now bring the mixture to a boil and boil for 5 minutes. Take off the heat then pour into sterilized glass bottles that have been warmed in an oven pre-heated to 90°C for 20 minutes. Stopper tightly then store in a cool, dark cupboard.
After opening store in the refrigerator (it will keep for several weeks).
)
