Wednesday 6 October 2010

Pommettes

At the end of September what looks like a hawthorn tree produces fingertip sized pink-red fruits known around here as Pommettes. They have a sweet and quite intense apple taste and the tree, l'Azérolier (Crataegus azarolus), is actually a Mediterranean species of hawthorn and closely related to the apple.

Pommette trees are quite common along the side of chemins (lanes) but it is unusual to find one like this in a relatively exposed windswept location - most of the pommettes have blow off.



We eat them as a sort of dessert equivalent of olives - they have a core of two grape pip like stones.

They can also be cooked and sieved to make an equivalent of apple conserve.

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