English Russet *

I'm not certain today's apple is the true English Russet and would welcome any suggestions about that from my readers. ¶ 

I do love a mystery.

The above combination of rosy blush, light brown russet, and green-tinged yellow (in the unblushed peel) makes this sample a complex visual treat.

More description

The unrusseted region has a satin gloss. Lenticels are visible in the russet as dark green-brown dots, and elsewhere as tiny and tan, or filled with russet.

This apple is oblate and broad, with a thick stem peering from a shallow stem wells, and an open calyx.

It is promisingly firm.

I hope that's not too tedious, but even small details might aid identification. The important part is

The eating

This (provisionally) English Russet has fine grained white flesh that is breaking crisp, but its crunch is a bit subdued. It is sweet and well flavored. 

To be honest I am struggling to identify the lead flavor, though it is possible to pick out cane sugar and secondary notes of flowers, pear, and vanilla, and perhaps generic berries.

Possibly what I am struggling to identify is the harmonious synthesis of these elements.

I quite understand the industry's objection to a mass-market russet in America, even as I am not sympathetic to it. Everybody here "knows" that apples are supposed to be red (or maybe green, but let's not push it) and at any rate never brown.

But based on flavor signature I would expect this apple to have a real following out here. It is sweet, easy to eat, and interesting without being in any way offensive.

The plot thickens

I purchased this apple at the Portobello Road Market in London from a box containing many apples with Egremont Russet PLU stickers.

The apples at Portobello Market. Note the PLU stickers on some apples. The sign, and the label on the side of the box, identify these as English Russet.

I assumed it was an Egremont, and chose this sample specifically to photograph the blush, which I took to be a possible characteristic of the breed. Most of the other apples did not have any blush at all.

(Incidentally, that is why my initial photo shows so much blush and so little russet. I staged the shot that way.)

Fortunately, I also had several true Egremont Russet apples of conventional appearance. Tasting the blushed version suggested that I had an entirely different variety.

Karim Habibi, the owner of a fruit tree nursery in Kent, told me he'd never seen a blushed version like mine. "That isn't Egremont," he said, when I showed him a photo.

Blushing to admit

Most russets I have sampled do not blush so vividly, if at all, though a few, including Ashmead's Kernel, can do so. I do not think this was Ashmead based on flavor.

So what about English Russet? Is that even a cultivated variety, or just a generic class, a russet from England? As in "we''ll put whatever russets we have into the box and call them that."

Pomiferous has a description of English Russet that fits the bill with regard to blush: "The base colour is yellow blushed orange on the sun-exposed face."

That variety, Pomiferous says, was developed by Frederick William Wastie, a Victorian-era apple breeder. 

Same apple, different angle.

Pomiferous gives two conflicting accounts of English Russet's pedigree, but both versions have the Sturmer Pippin as seed parent.

Open to debate

Based on the above, I tentatively peg this as English Russet, as advertised on the side of the box at the market. But doubts remain.

This is far from a common variety. Neither Orange Pippin nor Keepers Nursery list English Russet.

The National Fruit Collection in the UK has it as a variant name for Roxbury Russet. This is not that.

How could such an obscure variety end up for sale, properly labeled, with a bunch of Egremont Russets at a street market in London?

So perhaps it is something else entirely.

Please share your thoughts in comments.