Benoni

This small, slightly oblate apple, perhaps 2 inches across, is ribbed, sometimes extremely so. It has a streaky red blush over light yellow, tinted orange where the blush is thin. The lenticels are effectively invisible.

I have two samples that bear a sweet cider aroma.

In early November, Benoni's flesh is soft and yielding, on its way to mealy but with plenty of miles left before it gets there. It turns out that Benoni is a summer apple.

Unfortunately the condition of these apples is going to limit the scope of my review, but here is what I've got.

Benoni's light yellow flesh that is is finer-grained than otherwise bears balanced flavors and a tiny bitter kick. A second sample, slightly better, has a faint citric quality married, incongruously, to the start of something savory.

I'd say spicy, but it would be more accurate to say herbal. On the sweet side.

The above is so tentative and incomplete ("herbal," for instance, but I can't say which herbs) that my readers might be advised to seek a better description elsewhere. I cannot vouch for any of them, but on general principle the write-up at Orange Pippin ought to be reliable.

The National Fruit Collection (UK) says this apple originated in Dedham, Massachusetts, about 1830. It was sometimes known as Fail-Me-Never.

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