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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] autumn olive bitterness

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  • From: Hank Burchard <hank@burchard.org>
  • To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] autumn olive bitterness
  • Date: Sun, 07 Sep 2008 21:09:38 -0400

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





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