French Crab

French Crab, painted by Bertha Heiges in 1905 for the US Department of Agriculture. Bertha Heiges. U.S. Department of Agriculture Pomological Watercolor Collection. Rare and Special Collections, National Agricultural Library, Beltsville, MD 20705. Source; public domain.

Origin: France, by the end of the 1700s
Parentage: Parents unknown
Uses: Cooking
Picked: October, in Brogdale, Kent (the National Fruit Collection)
Skin: Medium, truncate conical fruit; ground colour green yellow; over-colour brown
Flesh: Greenish; very firm
Flavour: Acid
Ploidy: Diploid
Also called: Amiens Long Keeper; Amiens Longkeeper; Claremont; Claremont Pippin; Easter Pippin; Green Beefing; Gruner Oster; Gruner Oster Apfel; Iron King; Iron Stone Apple; Ironside; Ironsides; Ironstone; Ironstone Pippin; John Apple; Robin; Somerset Stone Pippin; Three Years Old; Tunbridge Pippin; Two Years Apple; Winter Greening; Winter Queening; Yorkshire Robin; Young's Long Keeper; Young's Long Keeping; Young's Long-Keeping

The record of the National Fruit Collection, at Brogdale in Kent, describes it¹:

Thought to have originated in France. It was brought to England at the end of the 1700s. Fruits have white, distinctly green tinged flesh which is very firm, coarse-textured and a little juicy and acid. It cooks well, having a strong aroma when cooking.

Sources

French Crab (accession 1957 - 272), National Fruit Collection, Brogdale, Kent (Defra). Supports: the description quoted; the use; the fruit's size, shape and colours and the flesh, from the collection's characterisation; the picking time at Brogdale (mid october); the other names.
Using whole-genome SNP data to reconstruct a large multi-generation pedigree in apple germplasm, Hélène Muranty and others, BMC Plant Biology 20:2, 2020. Supports: its ploidy, diploid (supplementary table S1).

Sources

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