Bletting, Medlars and a Medlar Chocolate Cake
It's been a strange early autumn this year, considerably warmer than usual and following a really hot and dry summer. This means that the trees have been very fruitful and I've collected bags of hazelnuts, a couple of drawers full of apples and even wilding pears. What I did notice a couple of weeks ago was that the pear were effectively bletting on the trees; though its not to my taste, they were becoming soft and really sweet inside with the skin going from green to brown. The skin did not break, so though bletting is a kind of rotting the fruit flesh had not gone bad. For those fruit that do not ripen normally in the UK, bletting is an essential part of getting them ripe for eating. I'm thinking of medlars, service berries, rowan berries and mountain ash. Also Cornelian cherries and their hybrids that do not ripen naturally here.
In all honesty I was mainly thinking of quinces and medlars. So, last weekend, I made my way to a spot where I know medlars can be found. Just like the pears, they were beginning to blet. Medlars look like over-grown rose hips but they're essentially inedible when they're ripe and they need to blet (a secondary stage of ripening) before they can be used.
There are some fruit that are either sweeter after some bletting, such as sea buckthorn, or for which most varieties can be eaten raw only after bletting, such as medlars, persimmons, quince, service tree fruit, and wild service tree fruit (popularly known as chequers). Chemically speaking, bletting brings about an increase in sugars and a decrease in the acids and tannins that make the unripe fruit astringent. Ripe medlars, for example, are taken from the tree, placed somewhere cool, and allowed to further ripen for several weeks. In Trees and Shrubs, horticulturist F. A. Bush wrote about medlars that "if the fruit is wanted it should be left on the tree until late October and stored until it appears in the first stages of decay; then it is ready for eating. Ideally, the fruit should be harvested from the tree immediately following a hard frost, which starts the bletting process by breaking down cell walls and speeding softening. Once the process is complete, the medlar flesh will have broken down enough that it can be spooned out of the skin. The taste of the sticky, mushy substance has been compared to sweet dates and dry applesauce, with a hint of cinnamon.
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| Ripe medlars (left) and bletted medlar (right) |
Interestingly this year, there has been no proper frost yet, however we did have a colder and wetter week and that has started off the bletting process. So I picked a basketful of medlars, put them in a single layer on newspaper in a drawer in the attic and waited two weeks.
The two weeks are up now and the medlars are cold and mushy. Ready to cook with in fact. As Halloween is only a couple of weeks away I decided to prepare a traditional Austrian Gingered Medlar Chocolate Cake (Mispelkuchen mit Ingwer):
Austrian Gingered Medlar Chocolate Cake (Mispelkuchen mit Ingwer)
This is a modern Viennese cake, but based on medieval recipes. It's intended as an after-dinner cake and is baked in a loaf tin.
Ingredients:
100g (1/2 cup) butter
100g (1/2 cup) lard (or shortening)
10g (1 tbsp) runny honey
100g (1/2 cup) brown sugar
2 eggs
30g (1/3 cup) ground ginger
2 tsp ground allspice
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp freshly-grated nutmeg
2 tbsp cream of tartar
2 tbsp cocoa powder (at least 70% cocoa solids)
pinch of fine sea salt
pinch of freshly-ground black pepper
250g (2 cups) self-raising flour
3 tbsp of Seville orange brandy or rum
3 tbsp of milk
A little warm water
10 bletted medlars
Method:
Preheat the oven to medium heat (175°C). Line a loaf tin with baking paper.
Begin by creaming together the butter, lard, honey and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating thoroughly to combine after each addition. Grate the ginger then add along with any juices to the batter. Now sift over the cocoa and scatter over the spices, salt and cinnamon before mixing well to combine.
Fold in flour, brandy, milk then add enough warm water to create a smooth, silky dough.
Turn one third of the dough into the base of the loaf tin. Now comes the tricky part: peeling the medlars and removing the seeds.
The medlars need to have been bletted before use (ie they need to be brown and totally mushy). After peeling and removing the seeds you will be left with about a tablespoon of medlar puree per fruit. Beat the puree until smooth then use to spread over the batter in the loaf tin.
Cover with the remaining cake batter then transfer to your pre-heated oven and bake for about 45 minutes (until a toothpick inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean).
Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the cake tin for 10 minutes before turning out. Serve warm with cream.
It's a rich and indulgent cake, based on a recipe from FabulousFusionFood: Gingered Medlar Chocolate Cake that will be my edible (and seasonal!) gift for a Halloween party this year. For many more Halloween recipes please see the FabulousFusioniFood's Halloween recipes page.
Of course, I also made my medlar and pear mincemeat for Christmas: Medlar and Pear Mincemeat
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