“I ate it all, all of it, culminating in the platonic ideal of farmers’ markets: real farmers offering walnuts, honey, medlars in the bonkers ruins of Szimpla Kert.”

^{-Charlotte Mendelson, in The Financial Times}

I saw some unappetising and somewhat obscene-looking fruit on a stall the other day and was told by the laughing stall holder that they were ‘open arses’, a name which I discovered was commonly used in the sixteenth century for what we now refer to as medlars.

Of course, I had to buy one and try it. To eat this fruit raw it has to be bletted – a softening process which occurs after the fruit has ripened (the same is true of the astringent type of persimmon), and in the process the flesh and skin turns from a light colour to brown. At this stage it looks and tastes a little like apple sauce, and it will go well with cheese, and perhaps, as D H Lawrence suggests in his poem below, marsala. Mark Diacono of Otter Farm describes their taste as being “like an apple had a child after an affair with a date”

However, if you prefer to cook them medlars have a lot of pectin so they make a good jelly. Go to David Lebovitz’ blog for a well researched recipe.

Medlars are available through the winter, and sometimes bletting occurs due to frost otherwise it’s a question of waiting a week or two, storing them in a single layer in a cold place, under a cloche if you have one.

The gardeners among you might be interested to know that it is a very attractive tree – it doesn’t grow much above 8 ft/2.5m but it will spread to become almost as wide as it is tall.

Those who like to give unusual presents might consider buying a tree and some medlar jelly packaged up in an impressive wooden crate, available from The Gluttonous Gardener.

Medlars And Sorb-apples

I LOVE you, rotten,
Delicious rottenness.

I love to suck you out from your skins
So brown and soft and coming suave,
So morbid, as the Italians say.

What a rare, powerful, reminiscent flavour
Comes out of your falling through the stages of decay:
Stream within stream.

Something of the same flavour as Syracusan muscat wine
Or vulgar Marsala.

Though even the word Marsala will smack of preciosity
Soon in the pussy-foot West.

What is it?
What is it, in the grape turning raisin,
In the medlar, in the sorb-apple.
Wineskins of brown morbidity,
Autumnal excrementa;
What is it that reminds us of white gods?

Gods nude as blanched nut-kernels.
Strangely, half-sinisterly flesh-fragrant
As if with sweat,
And drenched with mystery.
Sorb-apples, medlars with dead crowns.

I say, wonderful are the hellish experiences
Orphic, delicate
Dionysos of the Underworld.

A kiss, and a vivid spasm of farewell, a moment’s orgasm of rupture.
Then along the damp road alone, till the next turning.
And there, a new partner, a new parting, a new unfusing into twain,
A new gasp of  isolation, intense
A new intoxication of loneliness, among decaying, frost-cold leaves.

Going down the strange lanes of hell, more and more intensely alone,
The fibres of the heart parting one after the other
And yet the soul continuing, naked-footed, ever more vividly embodied
Like a flame blown whiter and whiter
In a deeper and deeper darkness
Ever more exquisite, distilled in separation.

So, in the strange retorts of medlars and sorb-apples
The distilled essence of hell.
The exquisite odour of leave-taking. Jamque vale!
Orpheus, and the winding, leaf-clogged, silent lanes of hell.

Each soul departing with its own isolation.
Strangest of all strange companions,
And best.

Medlars, sorb-apples
More than sweet
Flux of autumn
Sucked out of your empty bladders
And sipped down, perhaps, with a sip of Marsala
So that the rambling, sky-dropped grape can add its
Orphic farewell, and farewell, and farewell
And the ego sum of Dionysos
The sono io of perfect drunkenness

Intoxication of final loneliness.

^{-D. H. Lawrence}

“That ilke fruyt is ever lenger the wers,
Til it be roten in mullok or in stree.
We olde men, I drede, so fare we:
Til we be toten, kan we nat be rype;”

^{-Geoffrey Chaucer, The Reeve’s Tale}