Mere de Menage

Type: Culinary

Synonyms: Belle Joséphine, Bellefleur de France, Burton’s Beauty, Capp Mammoth, Combermere, Flander’s Pippin (this is also used as a synonym for Sweet Cleave ), Harlow Pippin, Hounslow Seedling, Lord Combermere, Queen Emma, Rambour d'Amerique, Winter Colmar. Please also see Ahern Beauty .

Summary: This cooking apple has been grown for several centuries and well deserves the loyalty it receives. Under any one of its many synonyms, the Mère de Ménage makes a thick, sweet and slightly tart sauce as well as the classic French Apple Charlotte.

Identification: Large to very large and round tending to conic. The base colour is yellow, but the apple is washed red with darker streaks over more than half the surface. Some streaking on the shaded face where the base colour shows through. Numerous light-coloured lenticels at the calyx end, fewer toward the stem cavity. The calyx is moderately large and open set in a wide, somewhat shallow basin which is surrounded by a knobbed crown. The stem is short and slender, set in a deep and narrow, russetted cavity.

Characteristics: The flesh is white, coarse-grained, firm and crunchy. Somewhat dry, tart and slightly sweet, astringent.

Origins: Already grown in France during the 1700s. Favoured for cider making on Jersey in the Channel Islands off the coast of Normandy (France).

Cultivation: Vigorous, upright spreading spur bearer. Produces heavy crops. Well suited to cordon or espalier style training.

Cold Storage: Keeps up to three months.

Harvest: Late in the fourth period.

Pollination Group: D

Pollination Peak: 12

Ploidism: Triploid. Cannot pollinate itself nor other apple tree. Requires a nearby source of viable pollen to produce fruit.

Cold Storage Weeks: 12

Harvest Period: 4