The prince of all these among English apples is Cox’s Orange Pippin. Every grower knows that Cox is a difficult fruit to bring to a high standard, but it remains, after nearly 200 years, the one the connoisseur wants to eat. It is at its best from store in November and December. Its thin skin and the foaming texture of its richly sweet flesh are always welcome. In 1929, the fruit critic Edward Bunyard called it the Château d’Yquem of apples, on account of its combination of rich sweetness and long keeping quality.
Cox’s Orange Pippin was bred in 1830 by Richard Cox, a retired brewer. Cox lived at Colnbrook, now romantically sandwiched between Slough and Heathrow Airport, but then a quiet corner of rural Buckinghamshire. We do not know the apple’s parentage, but it is likely that one of its forebears was Ribston Pippin, a Yorkshire-born dessert apple that, to Victorians, occupied the place on the podium of ideal dessert apples now assumed by Cox.
This is the real wonder of Cox’s Orange Pippin: although it took me many years of gradual discovery to appreciate it, many of my favourite apples are closely related to it. When I encounter the eating quality of an unfamiliar apple and come to do a bit of superficial homework, there is Cox nearby on the family tree, quietly nodding to me in an unobtrusive way.
Denne historien er fra November 25, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra November 25, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
