Whole dried strawberries of the Senga Sengana variety, grown at the foot of the Dinaric Alps and dried with nothing added but a little apple juice. Large pieces, intensely fragrant, balanced between sweet and sharp.
What Senga Sengana is
Senga Sengana is a named strawberry variety, bred in Germany in the 1950s by Reinhold von Sengbusch — the name is a contraction of his. It became the standard variety across central and eastern Europe for one reason: it is the best-tasting strawberry for processing. It is deep red right through rather than white in the middle, aromatic, and holds up to freezing and drying without turning to mush. It is a poor supermarket strawberry — too soft to travel — and an excellent dried one.
One clarification, because these are widely sold as "alpine strawberries": this is not the alpine strawberry. Alpine strawberry, Fragaria vesca, is the tiny woodland fraise des bois. Senga Sengana is a full-sized garden strawberry, Fragaria × ananassa. "Alpine" refers to where it grows, at the foot of the Dinaric Alps, not to the species — which is why this page names the variety instead.
What drying does
Fresh strawberry is about 90% water — more than almost any other fruit — which is why it is so fragile and why drying transforms it so completely. What is left is dense, chewy and much more strongly flavoured than the fresh fruit, with the acidity brought forward. The pieces stay large because the fruit itself is large.
An honest word about "sweetened with apple juice"
Apple juice concentrate is sugar — fructose and glucose. It is here to keep the ingredient list to two items and let the strawberry lead, not to make the product low in sugar. Drying concentrates the strawberry's own sugars as well. This is a fruit snack; it is not a diet food.
A claim you will not find here
Dried fruit of this kind is often sold on the line that its fibre "supports normal intestinal function". That is a health claim, and it is not one that is authorised in the EU for strawberry fibre — the authorised bowel-function claims cover specific fibres such as wheat bran and rye. Dried strawberry does contain fibre. We are not going to tell you what it does for you.
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