Tinned strawberries. It appears they’re extinct in Australia. I’ve looked in Woolworths, Coles, Aldi, IGA as well as a number of independent and specialist stores. Tinned peaches, pears, pineapple, cherries, even tinned lychees, but no tinned strawberries anywhere. Strawberry jam—yes. Fresh strawberries—also yes.

I jump into research mode. Once upon a time SPC produced them. And you may still be able to buy them in New Zealand: Pams Strawberries in Syrup, 410g. Pams has been a staple in Kiwi kitchens for more than eighty years. Apparently. You may also be able to order them online from retailers that specialise in British food. So tinned strawberries still exist in other parts of the world.

Strawberries are a summer fruit and their season is short. Although we can now buy punnets the year round, strawberries are at their fragrant best when picked during their summer fruiting.

Tinned strawberries were a childhood favourite. Enjoyed when their fresh relatives were unavailable, sometimes even the preferred option … Frozen berries weren’t as much of a thing as they are now. (English fridges had small freezer compartments with room for a block of ice cream, a packet of frozen peas and not much else.) And produce in supermarkets and green grocers was more seasonally aligned than it is in our age of food imports and air miles.

This may be an unreliable or blurred memory, but my recollection of those canned strawberries is that they were considerably smaller than the golf-ball-size fruit that’s common today. Polish distinguishes (I think) between the regular strawberries you buy from shops, truskawki, and their wild ancestors, poziomki, which are tiny and super tasty. They grow in woodlands and rural edgelands, and if you’re not up for foraging yourself you may be able to find them for sale at local markets.

I don’t know why I’ve developed a craving for tinned strawberries, but I have. And as I can’t obtain them any other way I’ll have to make my own. I wash about three-quarters of a kilo of fruit, cutting larger specimens in half. Tip them into a pan with a squirt of vanilla paste and a scant teaspoon of strawberry jam and cook on a low heat until they reach the desired softness. About six to eight minutes. And there they are—my inauthentic tinned strawberries.

Finally, I couldn’t resist this wonderfully named recipe—an adaptation of Eton mess—that I found in a Queensland newspaper from 1932: Scotch Fog.