Discovery

I found these medium-sized apples with a blush of pure red at a farm store on the Fife coast. ¶ 

Discovery is practically unribbed and bears many light lenticels so small as to be difficult to see in poor light, both in the blush and in the yellow part of the peal. ¶ 

My examples come in assorted shapes, one squat and oblate, another more conical. They both wear crowns of russet around the stem well.

In hand, these have a little give, and bear a delightfully sweet-cider aroma. That sounds exciting but signals possible disappointment: apples that have been off the tree, unrefrigerated, for too long.

Let's eat them and see.

Discovering Discovery

One sample has a surprise: regions of light pink in the light yellow flesh. That flesh is soft, and (I think) medium-grained, though it can be hard for me to get a bead on texture with past-prime samples.

Which this is, as feared. But it's still munchable, if not exactly crunchable: it is yielding, not mealy.

Discovery's flavors are melded, but sweet with a balancing tart and featuring a distinct strawberry note that is very pleasing. The peal is chewy.

All in all, a surprising performance from an apple that is past peak. I wonder if I will ever score a better sample to try. I hope so.

I tasted three of these. That strawberry flavor was, respectively, clear, muddled, and absent.

Discovery is an open-pollinated Worcester Pearmain, according to other sources including the UK's own Orange Pippin.

Indeed the Pip's description, which is based on fresher samples and is in many ways more complete (so read it!) corroborates mine on the main points.

These are:

• strawberry flavor, sometimes ("Worcester Pearmain is probably the source of the strawberry flavour")
• pink color ("the red skin colour can occasionally bleed slightly into the flesh") and
• off-the-tree too long ("quite widely available in the UK in late August and early September," though later in Scotland, I'd suppose).