The season of medlar fruitfulness: bletting and harvesting

Apart from the medlar tree’s beauty in its form, flowers and foliage, it bears an intriguing fruit, which probably attracted human attention around three thousand years ago. A pome fruit cousin of the apple, pear and quince, the medlar is a member of the Rosaceae family, probably originating somewhere between the Caspian and Black seas. It meandered slowly west across the Continent in the company of Greeks, and northwards with the Romans, and turned up here during the Roman occupation of Britain.  

Anglo-Saxons appreciated medlars as health remedies. They were cultivated in the UK by the thirteenth century, becoming highly sought after on the Tudor table, favoured as a fashionable delicacy (perhaps inspired by Henry VIII who received gifts of them and ate them on court occasions). 

Having been a useful part of the British winter diet for centuries, they were falling out of fashion by the end of the first world war. 

The fresh, ripe medlar’s apple sauce-meets-citrus flavour is captured well in medlar jelly. The two-stage transformation of the soft, brown fruits into glistening, soft set, tawny coloured jelly to eat with cheese, charcuterie, and game, is pure alchemy. I gently hitched myself to this mysterious fruit in the aftermath of a health episode during 2015, and I haven’t looked back. In 2020 my orchard was awarded National Collection status, and in April, my book was published by Prospect Books: MEDLARS, Growing & Cooking. 

Harvesting

The medlar is the last orchard fruit to be harvested, usually from the end of October.  

My lived experience has challenged widely-held beliefs that night frosts are essential for successful medlar harvesting and bletting. I look for gradually changing foliage colour: dark green through yellow, orange, brown and red; fruit easily dropping from the trees; and signs that the fruit may be darkening and softening. Picking should be done on a dry day.  

A hard, fully-grown medlar easily separates from its fruiting spur. If they are soft and edible, picking can be slow and precarious if there are lots to gather. Fruit is more vulnerable to tearing when soft, spoiling quickly: eat, process, or freeze them.

I shake the tree and round up fallen fruit. (It’s useful to spread a tarpaulin beneath the tree to easily collect the fallen fruit.) This, and the picked fruit, goes into stackable, ventilated, mushroom crates, a couple of layers deep. The trays are placed in a cool, rodent-proof space to blet. The soft ones go into a zip-lock polythene bag for freezing.  

Successful bletting requires natural atmospheric conditions. I use a north east facing shed, leaving the door ajar. A north facing, unheated room indoors should work too.  

Bletting

Medlars are climacteric fruits: usually, but not always, becoming fully ripe and edible off the tree. Harvest them after they have fully grown, about 180 days after pollination. Bletting starts in the middle of the fruit, and is complete when the skin is dark, the fruit smells fragrant, and it is soft and fragile to the touch.  

Check the fruit by hand every three to five days. Soft bletted fruit can be separated from the hard for immediate use or freezing. A pair of fingerless gloves are useful, and a good audiobook helps pass the time. 

If autumn has a flavour, the medlar has it in spades. Bringing medlars to perfect, edible ripeness for the table, or to cook, requires a natural atmosphere, time, and patience; medlars hate to be rushed.  

Recipes

MUSMULA SIRKESI – MEDLAR VINEGAR 

This is a Turkish recipe included in my book, MEDLARS, Growing & Cooking, with the kind permission of Berrin Torolsan, publisher of Cornucopia magazine. It uses the hard, fully grown fruit, and the resulting vinegar is so good that I am making several litres this autumn for home consumption.   

• 500g / 1lb medlars, unbletted 

• 5-6 chickpeas, dried 

• Half tbsp rock salt 

• 1 tbsp honey 

• Half glass vinegar, apple cider or wine 

You will need a 2 litre jar with a lid. 

Method:

1. Wash the fruit and leave to drain and dry
2. Fill a jar with medlars, crushing them slightly as you add them
3. Add the chickpeas, salt, honey, and vinegar
4. Fill the jar with cold water, stir and cover
5. Stir daily until an opaque mould develops, then leave undisturbed to ferment
6. When the vinegar turns acidic, after ten days or so, filter and decant into a bottle and leave to improve or until needed.  
   

MEDLAR SYRUP 

Another recipe from the book, Medlar syrup gives you all the character of medlar in a concentrated form. It keeps brilliantly in the fridge and has no added sugar. Use it on yoghurt, over or swirled through ice cream, to improve a bowl of porridge, add sweetness to pancakes, or possibly in place of the caramel in an upside-down apple cake or in a tarte tatin. I drizzle the prepared stone fruit for roasting with medlar syrup to replace all the sugar and half the butter. It’s a good runny honey substitute in salad dressings. 

1.2 litres / 2 pints of medlar juice, the strained liquid from simmering a pan of bletted medlars well covered with water for an hour.  

You will need a wide, shallow pan and something good to listen to!

Method:

1. Pour the medlar juice into your pan. Bring the liquid up to boiling point and then reduce the heat to a gentle simmer
2. Watch over it, stirring occasionally, and skim off any gathering ‘bubble scum’ 
3. Gradually the juice thickens, reduces in volume, the colour darkens and the medlar flavour will intensify 
4. Remove from the heat when it has reached the desired consistency
5. Cool, and pour the syrup into a washed, rinsed and oven dried screw top jar. 

Store in the refrigerator. 

Copyright: Jane Steward, 2023 

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