I experienced serious fruit tree envy recently when visiting Kenton Hall in Suffolk, home of the McVeigh family and their longhorn cattle. It’s also home to Aunt Paddy and Uncle Howard, possessors of a lovingly-tended kitchen garden and crucially, of three or four espaliered apricots. Howard is rightly proud of them and says they produce a good crop of fine-flavoured fruit.

We have apples and pears, plums and gages, quince and cherries, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, tayberries, gooseberries, red-, white- and blackcurrants and something Dutch I can never remember the name of. What we don’t have are any apricots, so I was well jell, as my nieces and nephews probably wouldn’t be caught dead saying. I did, however, manage to source a few punnets in our local Co-op.

Usually I make apricots into a conserve, which is without a doubt the most popular jam in the Portly preserve cupboard. This time…