Random Thursday: The Medlar Harvest
Jan. 7th, 2016 05:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjI don't think I've blogged here (as opposed to on facebook) about my experiment in growing medlars. This is an interesting fruit with a long history in Europe that has essentially no commercial viability due to its ripening behavior. In short: to become edible, the fruit must undergo a process known as "bletting" which is a sort of edge-of-going-rotten state in which it becomes very soft and mushy. Before bletting, it isn't edible; after bletting, it isn't shippable.
So when I was brainstorming fruit trees it might be fun to try, I settled on medlars because they met my key criteria: foodstuffs appropriate to pre-1600 Europe where I can reasonably grow a sufficient quantity for use and that it is difficult to obtain commercially.
I planted two bare-root trees two years ago, and was somewhat surprised to get half a dozen fruit in the first year. This was just barely enough to share around for tastes with a bunch of historic-foodie friends last year. This year, the two trees presented me with a generous four dozen or so and I was able to make some more general observations about how to handle and treat the fruit.
The fruit are around the size of a ping-pong ball, brown and with a very prominent sepal-end that's prone to splitting under some circumstance of growth yet to be identified. Last year, I picked them when I saw cracks begin to develop on one of the fruits, then stored them in a cool dark place (in a cardboard egg carton in the garage) for about a month. As I recall, they were soft, a couple had split (which makes them prone to mold), and maybe three looked to be edible. I carefully peeled the thin rind, leaving about one tablespoonful apiece in seedy pulp.
This year, I picked them when I first spotted a fallen fruit (since one of the traditional bletting methods is to leave them on the tree through a frost). A couple fruits were already soft, but the rest needed to sit for a while. I simply piled them in a basket in the kitchen (not too warm, but not cool) and checked them every couple of days for softness, transferring the soft ones into a separate container. (This was more to monitor the progress than from any expectation that the bletted and unbletted fruits would affect each other.)
When I first picked them, I tried the few that were soft and discovered that a much more efficient method of processing is to gently split the rind from the stem end, then scoop out the soft part of the pulp from this back end. This avoids having to pick out remnants of the sepal area which greatly increases the labor. The result is about 50:50 pulp and largish seeds and I simply ate it plain, straining the seeds out with my teeth.
I can see why the taste is described as a sort of "apple custard" taste. Definitely an apple-ish flavor, but the bletting process seems to add an overlay of "oxidated apple" (what you might expect if you let apple slices brown overnight). This is probably a fairly accurate description of part of the results of bletting, as the bletted flesh is also a medium brown in contrast to the more whitish unbletted flesh. It's a very mild, subtle flavor.
When all but about half a dozen of the rest of the fruits were soft, I scooped out the pulp into a bowl. At least, I did that for the properly bletted ones. Successful bletting seems to require a completely unbroken rind, for the fruits that had developed cracks around the sepal area were a bit dried out and spongy but not soft and pulpy. It may be that picking them earlier will prevent this, but it's also possible that watering and temperature conditions during ripening are relevant. At this point, the remaining half dozen fruits probably will not blet properly as they're beginning to shrivel a little without general softening.
I wanted to see if I could find a way to separate the pulp and seeds easily in order to do something more interesting than simply direct eating. First I tried squeezing it through several layers of cheesecloth. This might be successful and efficient for larger amounts of pulp, but for what I had (about one cup in all), too much of the pulp was staying stuck to the seeds. So I switched to the very inefficient method of squeezing the seeds out of the pulp between my fingers and periodically wiping the pulp off my fingers into a container. This took maybe 20 minutes for the cup of pulp. It occurs to me that mixing in a bit of water and agitation to separate the pulp from the seeds may help. Next year I hope to have enough fruit to try several options. At the moment, I popped the half cup of de-seeded pulp into the freezer to contemplate what I want to do with it.
The literature suggests that unbletted fruits can also be used to make jelly and I may try this option some year when I have a large enough harvest for it.
So when I was brainstorming fruit trees it might be fun to try, I settled on medlars because they met my key criteria: foodstuffs appropriate to pre-1600 Europe where I can reasonably grow a sufficient quantity for use and that it is difficult to obtain commercially.
I planted two bare-root trees two years ago, and was somewhat surprised to get half a dozen fruit in the first year. This was just barely enough to share around for tastes with a bunch of historic-foodie friends last year. This year, the two trees presented me with a generous four dozen or so and I was able to make some more general observations about how to handle and treat the fruit.
The fruit are around the size of a ping-pong ball, brown and with a very prominent sepal-end that's prone to splitting under some circumstance of growth yet to be identified. Last year, I picked them when I saw cracks begin to develop on one of the fruits, then stored them in a cool dark place (in a cardboard egg carton in the garage) for about a month. As I recall, they were soft, a couple had split (which makes them prone to mold), and maybe three looked to be edible. I carefully peeled the thin rind, leaving about one tablespoonful apiece in seedy pulp.
This year, I picked them when I first spotted a fallen fruit (since one of the traditional bletting methods is to leave them on the tree through a frost). A couple fruits were already soft, but the rest needed to sit for a while. I simply piled them in a basket in the kitchen (not too warm, but not cool) and checked them every couple of days for softness, transferring the soft ones into a separate container. (This was more to monitor the progress than from any expectation that the bletted and unbletted fruits would affect each other.)
When I first picked them, I tried the few that were soft and discovered that a much more efficient method of processing is to gently split the rind from the stem end, then scoop out the soft part of the pulp from this back end. This avoids having to pick out remnants of the sepal area which greatly increases the labor. The result is about 50:50 pulp and largish seeds and I simply ate it plain, straining the seeds out with my teeth.
I can see why the taste is described as a sort of "apple custard" taste. Definitely an apple-ish flavor, but the bletting process seems to add an overlay of "oxidated apple" (what you might expect if you let apple slices brown overnight). This is probably a fairly accurate description of part of the results of bletting, as the bletted flesh is also a medium brown in contrast to the more whitish unbletted flesh. It's a very mild, subtle flavor.
When all but about half a dozen of the rest of the fruits were soft, I scooped out the pulp into a bowl. At least, I did that for the properly bletted ones. Successful bletting seems to require a completely unbroken rind, for the fruits that had developed cracks around the sepal area were a bit dried out and spongy but not soft and pulpy. It may be that picking them earlier will prevent this, but it's also possible that watering and temperature conditions during ripening are relevant. At this point, the remaining half dozen fruits probably will not blet properly as they're beginning to shrivel a little without general softening.
I wanted to see if I could find a way to separate the pulp and seeds easily in order to do something more interesting than simply direct eating. First I tried squeezing it through several layers of cheesecloth. This might be successful and efficient for larger amounts of pulp, but for what I had (about one cup in all), too much of the pulp was staying stuck to the seeds. So I switched to the very inefficient method of squeezing the seeds out of the pulp between my fingers and periodically wiping the pulp off my fingers into a container. This took maybe 20 minutes for the cup of pulp. It occurs to me that mixing in a bit of water and agitation to separate the pulp from the seeds may help. Next year I hope to have enough fruit to try several options. At the moment, I popped the half cup of de-seeded pulp into the freezer to contemplate what I want to do with it.
The literature suggests that unbletted fruits can also be used to make jelly and I may try this option some year when I have a large enough harvest for it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2016-01-07 06:51 pm (UTC)I find this fascinating, thanks for the update!
no subject
Date: 2016-01-07 08:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-07 08:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-08 02:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-08 05:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-14 04:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-14 05:55 pm (UTC)