TRADITIONAL APPLE VARIETIES
The University of Bristol Heritage Orchard’s five ancient apple varieties are grown for their historical provenance as well as different flavour and texture characteristics.
1 Nonpareil An ancient apple variety brought over from France in the 1500s, the Nonpareil is a late-season, russet eating apple with a distinctive pear-drop taste. It’s a great variety for juice and cider making.
2 Winter Pomeroy A rare, late-season variety of cooking apple that’s rather large but stores well over winter. It has a tough, pectin-rich skin, so it’s ideal for the apple butter recipe (see page 55) as the skin gets sieved-out after cooking.
3 The Harvey An old English apple dating back to 1629, also known as the Dr Harvey (after Dr Gabriel Harvey of the University of Cambridge) and was once popular in East Anglia. This is a cooking apple and the texture softens beautifully with heat, but it’s quite sweet, so you don’t need to add much sugar.
4 Golden Pippin A versatile, intensely flavoured small apple used in cooking, cider making and also as a dessert apple.
5 Winter Pearmain Thought to hail from Sussex, this is a good general cooking apple but it does sweeten with age, so could be considered dual-purpose (eater or cooker) later in the season.
Go online For more traditional varieties and how to grow your own apple trees, visit rhs.org.uk/apples