Medlars
You'd be hard-pressed to find a medlar in a fruit shop these days. To be honest, you'd be hard-pressed to find a fruit shop these days. But I am reliably informed that we have been eating this weird-looking fruit since the Romans introduced it to Europe 2,000 years ago (1) until it fell out of favour in the 1950s. Medlars - looking not at all bum-like The reason that the medlar was popular for 2,000 years is certainly not because of its user-friendly properties. You don't just pick it off the tree and eat unless you have teeth like a horse and guts that can withstand the onslaught. No, you pick the fruit in October and November when the little brown globes are about 2 inches in diameter and as hard as bricks and then you have to carefully store them (crate of hay or sawdust) for a month until they become VERY ripe, in the process known as 'bletting'. This was a term invented in the 19th century (derived from the French verb blettir - to become over-ripe) to descri...