It’s that time of year… Summer’s fruit and vegetables are just a memory and even the display of autumn leaves is coming to an end. But there’s one seasonal treat that makes November worth waiting for: the Medlar, Mespilus germanica.
Until a couple of years ago I hadn’t tried Medlars but now I have done I look forward to eating them every year.
Medlars still on the tree, mid November
Medlars are members of the family Rosaceae and are relatives of the apple. They don’t ripen properly in this country so you have to wait for them to soften and turn brown, a process known as “bletting”, from the French word blettir, meaning to make soft. This will happen indoors if you pick the fruit in early November and store it, or outdoors after hard frosts. The first Medlars I ate were lying underneath a tree in the snow, and they were delicious.
The texture of Medlars is mushy and the colour is an unappealing brown, so it’s unlikely supermarkets will ever bother to stock this fruit. Furthermore, Medlars look like small russet apples but with an open calyx that gives rise to the fruit’s more vulgar names: “open arse” and “dog’s arse” ( “cul-de-chien” in French). The scientific name is more polite: Mespilus is derived from the Greek Mesos meaning “half” and Pilos meaning “ball”’ in reference to the shape of the fruit.
Don’t be put off by appearances. The taste of Medlars is lovely, a unique combination of cooked apple, date and apricot. The fruit is lovely raw – just scoop out the flesh, avoiding the large seeds (usually four per fruit). It is better baked in a moderate oven (gas mark 4) for 15 minutes and served with honey and cream or creme fraiche.
If you have access to enough fruit (1 kilogramme or more), medlar jelly is a lovely accompaniment to game or cold meats. The secret is to use a mixture of bletted and unbletted fruit – the former for flavour and the latter for its greater pectin content. Last year I had a problem setting my medlar jelly because I was using mostly bletted fruit. This year I had a better mixture of fruit and I also added some thick slices of lemon skin with pith and my jelly set very quickly. The recipe I use is:
Making Medlar Jelly
Medlar Jelly
Day 1: Take 1kg of bletted and unbletted Medlars (ideally half and half) and cut them in half and boil them for an hour in a preserving pan, with the juice of half a lemon and just enough water to cover the fruit. Keep stirring to a minimum, to stop the jelly from going cloudy. Set up a jelly bag on a frame (I use a kitchen stool) and let the cooked fruit drip through the jelly bag into a bowl.
Day 2: Measure the juice into a preserving pan and add 375g sugar to each 500ml of Medlar juice, a vanilla pod and a muslin bag containing some thick slices of lemon with pith (to add extra pectin). Boil for five to ten minutes. (If you have a jam thermometer, boil until the mixture reaches just below jam temperature.) Pour into sterilised jars. Repeat if the mixture hasn’t set.
The above recipe is adapted from one in Mark Diacono’s excellent book “A Taste Of The Unexpected” (Quadrille Publishing, 2010). Another recipe, which I haven’t tried yet, is Medlar Cheese, which sounds delicious.
Don’t eat the seeds. The Plants For A Future website warns that Medlar seeds contain hydrocyanic acid but they are rather large and solid so will probably break your teeth or choke you before you die of cyanide poisoning.
The Medlar is a native of south-east Europe but sometimes occurs in the wild in Britain, often as a relic of cultivation (see distribution map).The Romans are thought to have introduced Medlars to central Europe and recently Medlar seeds have been found in Switzerland in deposits from the Second Century AD (reference – PDF file)*.
The Medlar is a lovely tree to grow in your garden too. Its leaves are dark green, large and leathery and it bears large white, star shaped flowers in the late spring and golden yellow-brown leaves in autumn. It grows up to 3 – 5 metres tall. Medlars often have a lovely, twisted and drooping shape and don’t require much pruning. They are self-fertile, so you only need one in your garden to produce fruit.
*For an overview of the Medlar’s origin and history, see “The Medlar (Mespilus germanica, Rosaceae) from Antiquity to Obscurity” by John R. Baird and John W. Thieret in Economic Botany Vol. 43, No. 3 (Jul. – Sep., 1989), pp. 328-372.
