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The woman who sold me these medium-sized apples warned me twice they would be tart.
Tydeman's Early is round and only slightly ribbed, with a crimson blush that ranges from dark and saturated to streaky.
Many light lenticels of varying size make the surface of this apple a busy place.
Biting in reveals fine-grained white flesh with a slight green cast that suggests the fruit is perhaps not quite ripe. It's not super crisp.
Despite the farmer's warning, the Tydeman's flavor is mild and pleasant, though there is some tartness and acidity that enters the picture after the initial presentation.
Those initial flavors comprise some berries-and wine, a little spice, and a kind of generic cidery fruitiness.
These tastes marry well and the tartness just adds a little kick when it chimes in. The net effect is refreshing and satisfying, though I suspect that both flavors and texture would be better defined by a little more time on the tree.
Of my 3 samples, though, one was less pleasant. It had greater acidity that overwhelmed the other flavors.
Tydeman's is a mixed bag, but get a good one and you'll be pleased.
Tydeman's is a McIntosh x Worcester Pearmain cross from the United Kingdom, similar both in parentage and appearance to Tydeman's Michaelmas Red, which ripens in September. These are smaller, though.
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Tydeman's Michaelmas Red |
Indeed I was not sure what I had found at first. Yet the farmer told me that she couldn't keep them on the tree at this point. Based on that I think I've ID'd this one correctly.
Henry Tydeman was a fruit breeder who also created Tydeman's Late Orange.
Note: On the off chance of a later and perhaps better sample, I delayed posting this for a week. No such examples were available. I bought my Tydemanses on August 12 and tasted them on the 13th and 14th.
I encountered this apple at the food coop today. The apples in the bin were on the small side, but attractive. The texture was fine grained, very soft and chewy. That degree of chewy-ness is a characteristic I don't really care for. The flavor was enjoyable enough, tart but with enough sweetness to balance it out. For this time of year, for an heirloom I'd go with Akane instead. For modern apples, I like the Zestars this time if year.
ReplyDeleteI don't think of Akane as an heirloom, though it is only about 10 years newer than Tydeman's Early.
DeleteBoth are clearly not "modern" in the sense of Zestar though!
In the early-mid aughts, some good friends of mine bought a house in northern Virginia that had been built in 1920. There were four apple trees on the property: A Grimes Golden and three Tydeman's Early Worcester. The Grimes were delicious fresh and made lovely applesauce and pie (and apparently were highly prized for hard cider and applejack). We struggled for years to figure out why anyone would plant so many Tydeman's. As you say, they are inconsistent as a fresh raw apple, and generally more tart than the family liked. They don't keep very well (they turn mealy and lose their aroma within a few weeks, even under refrigeration). As a pie filling we found them insipid. But then we discovered that if you make them into apple butter, they shine. Don't peel, just quarter and core; cook in crockpot overnight; mill out the skins in the morning and then leave the crockpot with its lid ajar for another 8-12 hours, and you have a deeply colored apple butter that needs no sweetening or spicing. Just the cooked-down apples create notes of cinnamon, vanilla, and black tea, with a whisper of nutmeg and clove. So we decided the person who put those trees in really liked apple butter, and perhaps made apple butter for the whole town every August-September.
ReplyDeleteWow, Simone, I am impressed! There are often many subtle flavors lurking inside the tart ones, masked by tartness.
DeleteGrimes is an exceptional apple when ripe.
We have a tree in our garden, must be 50 years old. The fruit never impressed dropped early, odd flavour and didn’t cook well.
ReplyDeleteIn the UK, 2024 has had a very wet year, the consequence has been fruit that is oddly pleasant. Apple butter next year….