A forgotten medieval fruit with a vulgar name (2021)
27 comments
·August 27, 2025crazygringo
> Medieval Europeans were fanatical about a strange fruit that could only be eaten rotten.
To be clear, you do not let the medlar "rot" before eating.
Rotting involves decay by microorganisms -- fungi, bacteria, yeasts.
What the medlar does is totally different. It has an enzyme within it that continues to break down the fruit, so it goes from rock hard to soft and edible.
Because this is a different chemical process from traditional ripening, someone gave this the name "bletting". But it's definitely not "rotting".
There's an evolutionary theory that by delaying when the fruit could be eaten, it could attract animals in the winter that would be more likely to eat it (since other fruits were no longer available) and potentially transport its seeds longer distances.
beambot
Quince and some persimmons are also commonly bletted before consumption... so it's not even unique to medlars.
kaikai
You can say a fruit is ripening, rotting, or bletting.
Would you say a fruit is ripe, rotted… bletted? Blet?
crazygringo
Bletted.
> "In Notes on a Cellar-Book, the great English oenophile George Saintsbury called bletted medlars the "ideal fruit to accompany wine."
cogman10
Speaking of forgotten fruit.
The evolution of watermelon is fascinating. It happened in (relatively) recent human history and has really stark changes.
There are old paintings of watermelon from the 17th century and it looks nothing like modern watermelon. [1]
Another wild human guided evolution is the evolution of the chicken. [2] That one literally happened in the last 100 years. A modern chicken is 3x larger than a chicken from the 1950s.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watermelon#/media/File:Pastequ...
[2] https://www.zmescience.com/feature-post/how-chickens-tripled...
bitwize
I'm reminded of what we did to the pug, which used to look like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pug#/media/File:Henry_Bernard_...
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Some breeders are trying to breed these traits back in, yielding the "Retro Pug" unofficial breed. Even the old pug is quite a heavy hand we've exerted on dog evolution.
webstrand
I have trouble believing this, though I've heard it before. The watermelon in the painting looks exactly like the insides I've seen in my homegrown watermelons when things don't go right, i.e. under watered, not fully pollinated, or just underripe.
vkou
The watermelon in [1] is what you'll get when you try to grow one in your garden.
The chicken in [2] is what you'll see when you look at a feral chicken.
a1pulley
Forgotten by some, maybe, but there are many Iranian-American and Armenian-American families with medlar trees in their suburban LA yards. It is sold at Paradise Nursery in Chatsworth.
el_oni
My partner and i used to harvest medlars from a community garden. We made medlar jelly from them when they had bletted. It kinda tasted like tea. Must be the tannins. We ended up making a sweet chilli sauce from it when we still hasnt eaten it when our chillis became ripe the following summer
socalgal2
How about the popular fruit with a vulgar name
> The English word "avocado" comes from the Spanish word aguacate, which comes from the Nahuatl (Aztec) word ahuacatl. This Nahuatl word translates to "testicle". The name was likely given to the fruit by the indigenous Nahua people because of its suggestive shape, and the fruit's reputation as an aphrodisiac.
crazygringo
Wherever you got that from has it backwards (it's a myth commonly repeated). The fruit name came first:
> In Molina's Nahuatl dictionary "auacatl" is given also as the translation for compañón "testicle", and this has been taken up in popular culture where a frequent claim is that testicle was the word's original meaning. This is not the case, as the original meaning can be reconstructed as "avocado" – rather the word seems to have been used in Nahuatl as a euphemism for "testicle".
unnamed76ri
I grow 20ish varieties of fruit, with 60+ more if you add in all the various cultivars within those 20.
Medlar is one I’ve been meaning to add for a couple of years and I think I’ll finally do it next spring.
linusthecat
In German there are called Mispeln or Aspernl (if you come from Austria like me) They are rather uncommon but I know some people who have grown them in their gardens. The fruits are only eadable after the first frost or if you put them into the freezer and the taste is more like mealy apples with a citrus note
perihelions
> "Credit: Alamy" (x5)
Actual credit for the hero-image engraving is Crispijn van de Passe (attributed, at least), sometime between 1600–1604, currently in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Besides the misattribution, even the description is wrong: only the right drawing (label "18") is the "Mespilus germanica" the article's about—the left one is an unrelated flower, drawn on the same page. (Or however you say it, for an engraving).
It's one plate from a large collection of botanical engravings, "Hortus Floridus" (published 1614–1616) you can browse on archive.org (I link below).
https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/nl/collectie/object/Dagkoekoeksbl...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crispijn_van_de_Passe_the_Youn... ("Dutch Golden Age engraver, draughtsman and publisher of prints")
https://archive.org/details/hortusfloridusin00pass/page/n248...
And the watercolor in the 6th image is by Anselmus Boëtius de Boodt (née Alamy?), also in the Rijksmuseum, dated 1596–1610.
https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/nl/collectie/object/Mispel-Mespil...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anselmus_de_Boodt ("Flemish humanist naturalist, Rudolf II physician's gemologist")
zwieback
Sounds intriguing, want to try one now. This is the kind of thing Home Orchard Societies wet their pants over. Probably grown right next to their pawpaw tree.
rwmj
Got it growing in our garden, so not that forgotten.
kmarc
Same, in Hungary it is also popular enough. Now I want to eat it; Although I have never seen in stores around Switzerland.
rciorba
In Germany you can sometimes find it at Turkish grocery stores. I grew up eating it every autumn. It's still common in my part of Romania.
YeGoblynQueenne
My friend's dad grows them in his garden in Greece, we bletted and ate some last year.
The 1989 Baird and Thieret paper referenced in the article might be my favorite research paper ever. I read it soon after it came out in the reading room of my college library. After finishing it, I genuinely was uncertain whether it was a real paper or a Borgesian spoof. Bletted for months before it's edible? A Shakespearean insult? On the Unicorn Tapestry and I'd never heard of it?
Here's a full copy of the paper if this intrigues you: https://sci-hub.se/10.1007/BF02858732
Since then, I've confirmed that it actually exists. I've even tasted the fruit. It's... OK. It's a reasonably tasty spiced brown apple/pear sauce with a grainy texture, but with the spices already built in. I've got my own tree planted---more for the novelty than desire for the fruit---and hope I'll finally get a few of my own this year.
Edit: If you are looking for more bizarre ways the Medlar pops up in strange places, here's a page about its traditional use in Basque culture as a symbol of authority: https://alberdimakila.com/en/medlar-tree-wood-basque-walking...