Everyone likes to eat fresh fruits, but there is such a fruit, it must be put into rot to eat...
Hawthorn, called medlar in English, is called messpilus germanica in Latin
This thing is a subfamily apple of the Rosaceae family, a relative of the apple, and the image resembles a hybrid of begonia and rosehip, similar in color to the color of a duck pear near the handle.
(Picture from the Internet, invasion and deletion, the same below)
The shape of the hawthorn fruit seems to me to be a bit crazy, and it seems to be dancing with teeth and claws. However, it seems that the French have a special understanding of this shape, "cul-de-chien", because of this name, Hawthorn seems to be less popular in France... (Of course, the ancient name in English is also this routine, which will be said later).
I think that in the era of less developed preservation and transportation technology, Hawthorn was once an important fruit. As early as BC, the ancient Greek geographer Strabo's Geography mentioned the cultivation of Hawthorn in his Geography. In England, where indigenous products are not abundant, hawthorn ripened in November was once a rare fruit in winter. The author studied undergraduate in Southampton, England, and there is a large hawthorn tree on campus. When I was in school, I would drop a lot of fruit every year, but unfortunately I didn't know that this thing could be eaten (it was as hard as a stone!) So I didn't pick it up, but I thought the shape of this fruit was scary, but I was afraid that it wasn't a good one. As a result, when I changed places to study for a doctorate, I suddenly saw the picture one day and realized that this thing had a lot to do. Then one autumn, I took a three-hour train ride back and picked up a few to taste.
Then you should ask, hard as a stone, how to eat? This is the characteristic of this thing, until it falls from the tree is hard, you have to take it home, put it for a while, and when it starts to rot, it starts to turn brown and soft, then you can eat it. This process of decay, there is also a special word in English, called "bletting". The following pictures can see the difference. Not rotten, smooth on the outside, cut white and hard. When it was rotten enough to eat it, it became the egg of Confucius—wrinkled, and the flesh inside became a brown lump of mud.
The British have a saying about the taste of this thing, "acquired taste", in other words, the first time you eat it is not accustomed. However, for the first time, I successfully put the hawthorn I had picked up rotten, and I felt that there was nothing wrong with eating it. The texture is similar to that of a more conscientious jam that does not put too much pectin. The taste does not seem to have any taste, slightly sweet, and there is a faint feeling of "mellow". On the palate there are some fibers, slightly like hawthorn in a sugar gourd, but softer. According to the British themselves, it tastes like tart with molasses, but anyone who has eaten British pastries knows that the taste of dead sweet and dead sweet is only afraid that tropical fruits can grow.
As a Beijinger, I can actually understand the bitterness of the British ancestors, the north is cold, there are not many fruits, and there is a shortage of fresh vegetables and fruits in winter. Today, taiping and begonias, which no one loves to eat, can become famous products, and apples, even more reluctant to eat, are placed on the plate. There is even this kind of passage: one winter, Chongzhen Ye was really tired of eating Chinese cabbage mustard, saying that he wanted to eat some delicate dishes, so the eunuch ran all over the city, and finally found two finger-sized cucumbers in a vegetable garden, and spent twenty-two silver for these two small cucumbers.
In the era when there is no modern transportation, no modern greenhouse, or even a "warm hole" for burning coal, if you can put a plate of Hawthorn, the children in the family must look at and wait every day, hoping that the golden brown fruit will soon become soft and become a "honey cake" (!), every few days, you can give your mother a good one to eat, that way, whether it is looking forward to the Spring Festival, whether it is Christmas, or spring and warm flowers, the long winter will become easier to spend. Unfortunately, Hawthorn was not introduced to China until 1930 (according to Wikipedia) and has not been popular ever since.
Now you generally don't see this thing in the British supermarket, after all, life is good, the taste of the British people has been continuously imported from Spain and South America, which is willing to eat this laborious rotten goods... Speaking of "rotten goods", English literature is indeed accustomed to comparing this kind of thing that "rots before maturity" to a prostitute - a woman.