It is just about spring in tropical south-east Queensland and my apple tree is in blossom.
Apple blossom in SE Queensland in August
I am more than a little confused about what sort of apples were available in seventh-century Britain. Ann Hagen, in her book on Anglo-Saxon Food & Drink (Anglo-Saxon books, 2006) has argued that several different types of apple were known in A-S England. The leech books (see my earlier post on leech books for references) mention sour apples, crab apples, sweet apples, wood apples and green apples, or they do if Cockayne’s translation is to be trusted. However, I am sure that I have read elsewhere that recognisable eating apples only arrived after the Norman conquest.
The issue is the amount of sugar in the apple. Crab apples (Malus sylvestris), if I understand correctly, are a British native, but very sour. I recall biting into one as a child. I only did it once. Eating apples (Malus domestica) come from Central Asia/Eastern Turkey.
So, when making cider, without the addition of any sugar, what sort of apples would have worked? This is important because Ann Hagen and others are now arguing that the ‘beor’ that features in so many descriptions of feasts was not beer but cider. The argument is complex and based partly on what Latin words for drinks are glossed with the word ‘beor’ (mainly sweet, honey-based drinks) and how strong it seems to be (very strong and drunk from small cups). Cider can be up to 18% alcohol, compared with about 5% for ale, 10% for mead and 12% for wine. But of course, that depends on the amount of sugar available in the apples to be converted to alcohol by the yeast. Ann Hagen argues, convincingly, I think, that ‘beor’ was sweet, because in recipes in the leechbooks it is hardly ever sweetened, compared to similar recipes where the herbs are mixed in wine, ale or skim milk.
To me, apples are the iconic fruit of my British childhood and I cannot imagine the country without them. The tree has almost a spiritual significance, which is why I go to the trouble of growing one in my Queensland garden. It is a self-pollinating variety that seems to stand up to the climate very well, but I only grow it for the blossom. The apples are perfectly edible and very pretty. They are almost square in cross-section, but they are very small – bite-sized, and I leave them for the many other people who live in my garden (birds, possums, fruit-bats).
The family of kookaburras who allow me to live in their garden
If there is anybody out there who can help, either with information on making cider with sour apples, or on whether sweet apples had arrived in Britain by the seventh century, I’d love to hear from you.
If you think of beor as applejack then the apples don’t need to be sweet–and you avoid having to do lots of thinking
My opinion: the Romans brought apples with them, and so there would have been some apples (and pears and dansoms, etc.) running wild where Romans had lived and farmed (e.g. villas here and there) but generally, no, mostly crabapples.
Which is why my A-S characters drink a lot of ‘white mead’ i.e. freeze-distilled mead, and also applejack (though I haven’t named it anything yet–I’d hesitate over beor because it would confuse readers, I think).
Also, it could be soft-fruit based alcohol: berries, currants, etc. Or ale flavoured with same. It could be anything…which I why I favour the freeze-distillation notion.
Thanks Nicola. I had vaguely heard of applejack, but I had no idea what it was until I checked your link. Was it ever made in Britain? In the absence of any clear evidence, we can, of course, just make it up! But I’m going to find out more about your freeze-distilling idea. Presumably it would only work up in the peaks and in the northern kingdoms. Even Deira doesn’t really have many long enough/ hard enough frosts.
I have a reference somewhere on the fruits and vegetables brought to Britain by the Romans. It is really a wide variety. Consider also that apples play a role in Arthurian legend – Avalon is isle of apples and Mryddin in Welsh tradition lives high up in apple trees. This central role in legend suggests to me that the apples were edible. Apples would be important food stuffs not only for cider but also because they are one of the easiest fruits to store for the winter.
Thanks Michelle.
I agree that the storage issue is significant. Pears bruise much more easily and before the days of jam, bottling etc., soft fruits could not be stored for more than a few days (although some were surely converted to alcohol – elderberry wine, for instance – as Nicola suggests). Rose hips and hawthorn haws survive on the bush for a month or two. Hazelnuts, of course, store even better than apples, so it is interesting that they don’t have the same iconic significance.
You can’t turn hazel nuts into alcohol–so to me it’s not at all surprising that they’re not iconic in the same way. Though there are (I think) Irish stories (though they could have been British) about salmon eating nuts. (I don’t have any references but it was something to do with wisdom.)