North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Hank Burchard <hank@burchard.org>]

John and Alan,

I am bemused by all this talk of bitterness and astringency in autumn 
olives -- and amazed  that anyone would attempt to peel such tiny soft 
fruits. None of my 18 AOs -- Hidden Springs's six cultivars and a dozen 
selections from the wild -- has the characteristics y'all are 
complaining about. And there is NO WAY a ripe AO can be peeled; when 
ripe the fruits are so soft you can eat them by the handful, pressing 
out the easily separated seeds with your tongue and spitting them out. 
If you need to chew the fruits they're not ripe, and they'll pucker you 
up like a green persimmon.

The juice is easily extracted without crushing the seeds, which are 
quite hard and tough. I heat the fruit gently in a wide, flat-bottomed 
pot and smoosh it with a potato masher. Then I use a chinois and pestle 
to express the juice and then pour it through a fine-meshed sieve, at 
which point it's ready to drink or, better yet, to be made into jelly 
(which has won me prizes at several county fairs). The juice is so far 
from astringent that I add a little cranberry extract to give a little 
more tartness.

The test for ripeness is taste rather than appearance; AOs color up well 
before they ripen. And unless you  live waaay up north, you should have 
sufficient degree days to fully mature them: autumn olives grow wild 
from Florida to Canada.

Hank Burchard
Pecker Wood Farm
7b central Virginia


> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 7 Sep 2008 10:40:18 -0700 (PDT)
> From: John S <swim_at_svc@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [NAFEX] autumn olive and peaches
> To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Message-ID: <73362.4388.qm@web39103.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Alan,? From personal experience, I do not chew the seeds and hence they do 
> not appear to affect the taste of the fruit to me.? It appears to me that the 
> quality about autumn olive consumption you object to lies in the skin of the 
> fruit.? As an experiment, I have in the past polished them to remove the 
> speckling from the outside of the skin, which helped somewhat, but peeling 
> the fruit (insanity, I know) produces a much better experience.
>
> John
>  
>
>
> --- On Sun, 9/7/08, Alan Haigh <alandhaigh@gmail.com> wrote:
> From: Alan Haigh <alandhaigh@gmail.com>
> Subject: [NAFEX] autumn olive and peaches
> To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
> Date: Sunday, September 7, 2008, 8:33 AM
>
> OK, I thought I might get into trouble?siting alum as the source of 
> puckeryness, I thought that was the compound that made pecan shells so 
> unpalatable- that's how my autumn olives taste and it is transferred to the 
> preserves because I know of no adequately gentle way of removing the seeds 
> without getting their flavor in the juice.? I'm in the northeast so it's 
> highly possible that we lack the heat units to properly ripen the Hidden 
> Springs cultivars which is precisely my point.? I still defy you to find 
> another member with experience with autumn olive who doesn't consider them 
> extremely fragrant where ever in the country they grow them.
>
> Alan Haigh, the Home Orchard Co.
> _______________________________________________
>
>
>
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Sun, 7 Sep 2008 17:21:42 -0400
> From: "S & E Hills" <ehills7408@wowway.com>
> Subject: Re: [NAFEX] autumn olive and peaches
> To: <swim_at_svc@yahoo.com>,      "'North American Fruit Explorers'"
>         <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Message-ID: <00cf01c9112f$bb88ce50$0300a8c0@hills2003>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> No way I could (even if I wanted) peel a fruit that is 2-3 mm in diameter
> with a seed.  Also, I didn't say they were wholly without scent, just that I
> found it incredibly underwhelming.  To smell anything I need to put my nose
> right into a group of 5+ flowers, any further away than that and I notice
> nothing.  They are certainly not like clove currants which I can smell from
> 10-15 feet away easily!  Right now passionflower incarnata in my front yard
> can be smelled from 30-40 feet away if the air is still.  
>
>  
>
> I planted goumi last and this year and I'm hoping this relative of the
> Autumn Olive impresses me more so than AO has.
>
>  
>
> Scott Hills
>
> 6b Michigan
>
>  
>
>   _____  
>
> From: nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
> [mailto:nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of John S
> Sent: Sunday, September 07, 2008 1:40 PM
> To: North American Fruit Explorers
> Subject: Re: [NAFEX] autumn olive and peaches
>
>  
>
>
> Alan,  From personal experience, I do not chew the seeds and hence they do
> not appear to affect the taste of the fruit to me.  It appears to me that
> the quality about autumn olive consumption you object to lies in the skin of
> the fruit.  As an experiment, I have in the past polished them to remove the
> speckling from the outside of the skin, which helped somewhat, but peeling
> the fruit (insanity, I know) produces a much better experience.
>
> John
>
>