North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Donna &/or Kieran" <holycow@cookeville.com>]

Astringent persimmons are eaten after they become squishy, this is true of 
the Asian kakis as well.  If you don't like squishy foods, you won't want to 
eat your persimmons as "dessert" fruits.  However, the pulp is pretty good 
stuff in cooking.  About all I make with it is a modified applesauce cake: 
just substitute persimmon pulp and cut the sugar in half.  It's as good as 
brownies for pure decadence.  You can also flatten the fruit and dry it for 
something rather like a date.  Don't bother to take the seeds out, they will 
pop out easily when dried.  Just make sure the astringency is gone before 
you dry them.
   I like persimmons very much, but I must say they seem to be variable in 
character.  I have an Early Golden with fruit that turned bright orange 
months ago but stayed astringent till recently.  As it has 90 chromosomes it 
had no seeds at all from our 60 chromosome wild stock.  I had grafted one 
tree from a local clump I consider good quality, but my crop this year 
proved that the original tree lacks a pollinator close by.  Like yours, it 
has only one or two seeds per fruit.  At our place it's full of seeds, not 
much room for pulp.  A lot of the wild persimmons on our place had reached 
maturity since 2006 (Big Freeze in '07) and they all have 6 or more seeds 
per fruit, plus they all overcropped so all the fruit are small.  I think 
the latter problem will take care of itself for next year, but I need to 
track down one or two male trees next spring and chop them down.     Donna