Jim Bradshaw: Mayhaw time was good for visiting

It was usually on a Saturday morning about this time of year that my Dad would announce, “You know, we haven’t seen Aunt Tee for a while. Maybe we should drive out there this weekend.”
Aunt Tee — I didn’t know until I was grown that her real name was Millicent — wasn’t really an aunt. She was some kind of distant cousin, so it wasn’t a close family connection that prompted the visit. It was that Aunt Tee lived on a small farm bordering the Sabine River west of Vinton. There was a boggy spot near the river, and a stand of mayhaw trees grew in the bog.
I’m sure that Poppa and Aunt Tee shared the bonds of affection usually found between distant cousins who exchange cards at Christmas and see each other only occasionally. I am also sure those bonds grew stronger, at least on Poppa’s side, at this time of year because Aunt Tee made the best mayhaw jelly I have ever tasted — and she made enough of it that no visitor left without a jar or two.
I don’t know what made hers so good, but I do know that I have searched to this day without finding any to rival her jelly.
It may have been the fruit itself. The LSU ag experts say wild trees such as hers grow best in wet, shady places, but that places where mayhaws grew naturally “have been cleared of trees by developers or the land has been posted, making much of the wild crop inaccessible to families who many years ago counted on mayhaw picking as an annual family outing.”
I don’t recall that our family had an annual outing to pick mayhaws; our annual outing was to forage in Aunt Tees pantry for the finished product.
If you’re not familiar with the mayhaw, it looks like a small crabapple and grows on a hawthorn tree, known for its sharp thorns as well as for its fruit. In south Louisiana the trees are usually covered with pretty white flowers by the first of March and begin to produce fruit in the middle of April. When the fruit is ripe, you can make it fall to the ground by shaking the tree, which is a lot more pleasant than reaching among the thorns to pick it.
It could be that the fruit from her bog was better than the mayhaws cultivated in commercial orchards. I suspect that Aunt Tee was like many of the good cooks of her generation who demanded quality ingredients and who knew what to do with them. It’s easy to make mayhaw (or practically any) jelly, but it’s not so easy to make great jelly, batch after batch.
The first thing to do is to get the juice from the fruit, which you do by boiling the mayhaws and straining the juice through cheesecloth or something like that. This may be the most important step, and the one that separates the great jelly from the simply good (Aunt Tee’s jelly from mine).
The LSU specialists tell us, “The most important thing … is to begin with a juice … that has a full-bodied mayhaw flavor. If too much water is used … the unique fragrance and taste will not match up to what is expected in quality jelly.”
How much water? Cooked for how long? The experts don’t tell us, and Aunt Tee never said.
The food wizards also say birds and bugs thrive on mayhaws but that the fruit has practically no nutritional value for humans.
That doesn’t matter. Bread has nutritional value, and I guarantee that anyone who tries a really good jelly smeared on hot bread just out of the oven is not going to stop at one slice — or possibly even just one loaf.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, Cajuns and Other Characters, is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.