Described by the Greek botanist Theophrastrus, over 2000 years ago, it was once widely cultivated in Tudor England.
Parkinson in 1627 spoke “of the pleasant sweetness of the fruit when mellow”. But today they are nowhere available in shops or markets and impossible to find except in a few private gardens. This should change.
The Medlar is a fascinating fruit. Botanically somewhere between a pear and a hawthorn, it blossoms in solitary fashion in May at the end of the shoots of the same year’s growth. The spring flowers are large, white fading to pink as they age. The unique dark green brown fruit looks somewhat like a small crabapple which forms without stem at the end of the shoot and becomes the half of a sphere with the petals arranged around the edge of the flattish top.
The decorative fruit is picked after a hard frost. The flesh is then still hard, green and austere and must be kept on a dry cool shelf until the pulp softens and mellows when it turns a light brown. This process is known as “bletting”. The pulp has then a distinctive pleasantly acidulous flavor.
It makes a beautiful small tree that fruits early, a 3-year-old tree producing a good crop. It has curious branches forming sharp-angled elbows. The leaves are large luxuriantly green and downy and turn beautifully red in the fall. Easy to grow, hardy, not particular as to soil or culture, it can be grown for its eye-catching ornamental value alone.
But it has long been regarded as a dessert fruit for connoisseurs. Professor Saintsbury in his classic book on wines, “Notes on a Cellar”, declared that “the one fruit which seems to me to go best with all wine, from hock to sherry and from claret to port, is the Medlar - an admirable and distinguished thing in itself, and a worthy mate for the best of liquors”.
Francesca Greensack in her fascinating book “Forgotten Fruit” said, “the lingering, slightly sweet, slightly winey flavor makes the Medlar seem like a natural comfit”. She also mentioned “roasting them with butter and cloves as a traditional winter dessert” and recommends jelly made from them “as an accompaniment to game”.
This “fruit de fantaisie” as the Frenchman Duhamel called it, should be restored to the fruit garden. It is of intriguing interest to the eye and palate alike as it stands unique among the fruits of the world.
