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Fruit from Poland

Dereń kiszony (brined unripe cornelian cherries, 'Polish olives')dereń kiszony

Hard, unripe cornelian cherries are fermented in a weak salt brine with herbs such as savory, thyme and bay. The firm, sour fruit looks and tastes enough like a table olive that it is called a "Polish olive". In one study a 2 % brine was fermented at 12 °C for 3 months.

Fully documentedFruit42 days – 3 months

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceThe amounts are from a lab study (Bernacka et al. 2025); traditional jars use savory and bay leaves without fixed amounts.
Unripe (green) cornelian cherriesCultivar 'Bolestraszycki' in the study[bernacka2025]
Brine of 2 % NaCl[bernacka2025]
Thyme1.3 g per litre of brine[bernacka2025]
Pimento and bay leaf[bernacka2025]
Summer savory (optional)[czyzowska2017]
Starterspontaneous, or a lactic starter culture

Total time across the recorded steps: 42 days – 3 months

Start
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What changes: Starting material: hard, green, unripe cornelian cherries

Step 1 of 4
Pick and rinse hard, unripe fruit
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria

Output: unripe cornelian cherries.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
hard
Colour
green

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Hard, unripe cornelian cherries are fermented in a weak salt brine with herbs such as savory, thyme and bay. The firm, sour fruit looks and tastes enough like a table olive that it is called a "Polish olive". In one study a 2 % brine was fermented at 12 °C for 3 months. Made in 4 steps over 42 days – 3 months. The longest step, ferment, takes 42 days – 3 months (Bernacka K 2025) and runs at 12 °C (Bernacka K 2025). Salt is 5 % (Czyżowska A 2017). Lactic acid bacteria; in one study they were found only in batches given a starter (Levilactobacillus brevis), and several Lactobacillus strains have been tested as starters and Yeasts, the largest group in the spontaneous batch do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step42 days – 3 monthsReported[bernacka2025][czyzowska2017]Ferment
Temperature12 °CReported[bernacka2025][czyzowska2017]Ferment
Salt5 %Reported[czyzowska2017]Blanch the fruit with savory (lab batches)

What makes this one different

Fermentation releases gallic acid from the fruit's hydrolyzable tannins, so extracts of the fermented fruit are high in gallic acid [bernacka2025].

Related ferments

Variants

  • Starter-culture versionsLab batches inoculated with probiotic Lactobacillus strains or with olive brine microflora [czyzowska2017].

Safety

In one lab study of five batches, Enterobacteriaceae were found only in the plain spontaneous batch and in a batch given a Levilactobacillus brevis starter but no thyme. The three batches brined with thyme had none, and the batch with thyme, inulin and the starter had none and the most lactic and acetic acid [bernacka2025]. The study gives no safe limit for the product.

Hazards the sources name: Enterobacteriaceae (2.98 log CFU/mL in the plain spontaneous batch and 2.00 in a starter batch without thyme; below detection in the three batches with thyme).

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Polish books describe pickling unripe cornelian cherries as a substitute for olives in 1801 (Lwów), 1809 (Przemyśl) and 1818 (an article by Stanisław Wodzicki), according to the Polish Ministry of Agriculture's entry for the product, which says the tradition was kept in manor kitchens of eastern Lesser Poland and the eastern borderlands. The ministry put Dereń kiszony podkarpacki on its list of traditional products on 26 February 2008. Czyżowska et al. (2017) report that pickled cornelian cherries were very popular in Poland in the nineteenth century and are now made as a traditional product at the Bolestraszyce arboretum.

  1. [bernacka2025] Bernacka K., Czyżowska A., Małodobra-Mazur M. et al. 2025, Chemical composition and in vitro antidiabetic effect of extracts from ripe, unripe, and fermented unripe Cornus mas L. fruits, Molecules 30(23):4625, doi:10.3390/molecules30234625paper
  2. [czyzowska2017] Czyżowska A., Kucharska A.Z., Nowak A. et al. 2017, Suitability of the probiotic lactic acid bacteria strains as the starter cultures in unripe cornelian cherry (Cornus mas L.) fermentation, J Food Sci Technol 54(9):2936–2946, doi:10.1007/s13197-017-2732-3paper
  3. [minrol] Ministerstwo Rolnictwa i Rozwoju Wsi (Polish Ministry of Agriculture), Dereń kiszony podkarpacki, entry on the list of traditional products (listed 2008-02-26; last modified 2018-09-19)gov
  4. [plwiki] Polish Wikipedia, Dereń jadalny (unripe fruit can be fermented in brine to give an olive-like product), read 2026-10-16wiki