Bletting: How To Enjoy The UK's 'Thoroughly Forgotten' Fruits

I know these things aren’t objective, but come on – autumn has to be the best season, right? There are the crunchy ruby leaves, the cosy evenings in and, if you’re a gardener, a welcome glut of well-earned fruit and veg. 

Apples, beetroots, carrots, potatoes and plenty more are at their delicious best once the season starts. But if you’re not “bletting”, you might be missing out on some of the UK’s more forgotten ancient fruits (including those that thrive in the quieter winter months).

Take medlars, for instance, best harvested in November. Cambridge’s Pembroke College, which boasts its own medlar tree, said the fruit “once held a place in English medieval culinary traditions on account of [its] warmly sweet flavour described as something between spiced apples and dates”. 

But they require an extra step to be palatable that can make other less-loved fruits, like rosehips, more delicious too: bletting.

What is bletting? 

The term was made up by 18th-century botanist John Lindley in 1848.

Speaking to HuffPost UK, Guy Barter, Chief Horticulturalist at the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), said bletting “is an extreme form of ripeness on the cusp of decay, some say slightly decayed, so medlar fruit goes soft and slightly fragrant, becoming palatable – acquired taste is the usual term”.

Bletting usually involves leaving picked fruit in appropriate storage for a couple of weeks on paper, hay or wood-lined trays, without touching. These should be well-ventilated and placed in a cool, dark environment like a garage.

Before this process, fruits like medlars and chequers (more on those later) are hard and tart or flavourless.

We don’t need to apply the process to most fruits, however, because the majority “have a longer ripening process where the starch and acids in the fruit turn into sugars and aromatic compounds and are pleasant to eat, becoming rather woolly and insipid when overripe”. 

Pembroke College and the RHS, meanwhile, point out that we should wait ’til the after the first frost to eat foods like medlars. 

“The first freeze and thaw breaks down the cell walls in the fruits and initiates a process of controlled rotting that turns the medlar flesh into something stickily sweet and delicately perfumed,” the college’s site reads.

Which fruit should you blet? 

Well, there are medlars, obviously. And chequers, a rarely eaten berry from a native species related to mountain ash (the wild service tree), “is eaten fully ripe and might be considered to be bletted,” Barter added. 

Described as “one of England’s most thoroughly forgotten” fruit, chequers are considered to taste date-like once bletted. Once relatively ubiquitous, they’re now quite rare.

The expert also said that while hawthorn berries aren’t especially appetising, “they blet well enough, usually being left on the tree with birds and children eating them”.

And even though most supermarket persimmons are sold ripe, “some need to be bletted to be palatable”. 

Additionally, berries like sloes “do lose some of their astringency when older and ideally frosted – this is not usually called bletting and probably related to ice crystal formation – the freezer offers a shortcut. The same goes for certain ornamental or wild pears and apples”. 

Even “rosehips are at their best when very ripe,” Barter concluded.