Grain and Chaff from an English ManorSavory, Arthur Herbert
History
Grain and Chaff from an English Manor
Savory, Arthur Herbert
Aldington (Worcestershire, England); Country life -- England; England -- Social life and customs
As showing how conservative is the popular demand for apples, Cox's
Orange Pippin, which is absolutely unapproached for flavour, and is
perfectly sound and eatable from early in November till Easter if
carefully picked at the right moment and properly stored, was
cultivated thirty or forty years before the British public discovered
its extraordinary qualities! I find it described as one of the best
dessert apples in Dr. Hogg's _Fruit Manual_, and my copy is the third
edition published in 1866, so it must have been well known to him some
years previously, though we never heard much about it until after the
twentieth century came in. Though the colour, when well grown, is
highly attractive to the connoisseur, the ordinary buyer did not
readily take to it as it is rather small. In 1917 Cox's Orange Pippin,
however, really came into its own; I myself, here in the New Forest,
grew over 3,000 pounds on about 120 trees planted in 1906, each branch
pruned as a _cordon_, and very thinly dispersed, and the trees
restricted to a height of about 14 feet. The apples were mostly sold
in Covent Garden at 6d. a pound, clear of railway carriage and
salesmen's commission. In 1918, a year of great scarcity, these apples
were selling in the London shops up to 3s. 6d. apiece! Now that its
reputation is fully established, it is likely to be many years before
it becomes relatively low in price, as the foreign apples of this kind
cannot compare in flavour with those grown in our own orchards. I
appreciate the man whose attention was wholly given to some
particularly dainty dish, and, being bored at the table by a
persistent talker, gently said, "Hush! and let me _listen_ to the
flavour."
As an early market apple there is none more popular than the Worcester
Pearmain, first grown in the early eighties by Messrs. R. Smith and
Co., of Worcester, and said to be a cross between King of the Pippins
and the old Quarrenden (nearly always called Quarantine). It is a most
attractive fruit--brilliant in colour, medium size, with pleasant
brisk flavour--and is an early and regular bearer. I recognized its
possibilities as soon as I saw it, and getting all the grafts I could
collect, and they were very scarce at the time, I had the branches of
some of my old worthless trees cut off, and set my old grafter to
convert them into Worcester Pearmains; they soon came into bearing and
produced abundant and profitable crops.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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