Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Cook's Guide entry for Bletting along with all the Bletting containing recipes presented on this site, with 19 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Bletting recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain Bletting as a major wild food ingredient.

Bletting is a form of secondary ripening (prior to rotting) that some fruit (mainly in the Rosaceae family) undergo. Though the exact chemical processes remain unknown, broadly speaking, enzymes in the fruit break down complex carbohydrates into simple sugars such as fructose and glucose, and it becomes richer in malic acid — the main chemical culprit behind the sour taste of other fruit such as apples. Meanwhile, harsh tannins, which contribute to the bitter astringency of younger red wines, and antioxidants such as ascorbic acid (Vitamin C), are depleted.

Bletting is a form of secondary ripening that certain fleshy fruit undergo. It was first described in pears and is an important factor in the edibility of medlar, persimmons and quinces.

Bletting is a process that certain fleshy fruit undergo, beyond ripening. There are some fruits that are either sweeter after some bletting, such as sea buckthorn, or for which most varieties can be eaten raw only after bletting, such as medlars, persimmons, quince, Service Tree fruit, and Wild Service Tree fruit. The rowan fruit, aka Mountain Ash must be bletted, then cooked to be edible, to break down the toxic parasorbic acid into sorbic acid.

Chemically speaking, bletting brings about an increase in sugars and a decrease in the acids and tannins that make the unripe fruit astringent. This process can be aided by humans. Ripe medlars, for example, are taken from the tree, placed somewhere cool, and allowed to further ripen for several weeks.

Bletting is defined as a stage of fruit development in-between ripening and rotting. It describes when a fruit has fully ripened, has started to break down, but is not quite rotting yet. There’s a bit of semantics at play here, strictly speaking bletting is actually the early stages of rotting, but before the fruit goes bad.

Bletting often results from a breakdown of the fruit's flesh. This can be initiated by a frost and it's often said that fruit to be bletted should only be picked in later October after the first hard frost of the year. This has led to some confusion between bletting and the sweetening of some fruit (like sloes and Cornelian cherries after a frost). The same is also true for rowan betties, which were traditionally collected after a frost. Of course with climate change early frosts are becoming rarer and rarer but technology comes to the fore here. We can, these days, simply collect the fruit in the latter half of October as we normally would then bring it home and freeze it before use. Fruit that sweeten or freezing like sloes, cornelian cherries and rowan berries can be frozen hard so the ice crystals form and break the cell walls, making then softer and sweeter. You can then use them as you normally would (for flavouring alcohols or making jams and preserves).

For fruit that need to be bletted, remember that the freezer is generally much colder than an early frost. So I suggest placing them in the freezer after collection in the morning and leaving them there for 2 hours only. Remove from the freezer, wipe dry and allow to come to room temperature. Wipe dry once more then store in a cool cupboard to blet as you normally would.

In English, the process of bletting was only formally recognised fairly recently. In fact, the word 'blet' was only coined in 1835 by John Lindley, in his Introduction to Botany (1835); there was no word for the process previously. He derived it from the French poire blette meaning 'overripe pear'. "After the period of ripeness", he wrote, "most fleshy fruits undergo a new kind of alteration; their flesh either rots or blets".

Thus the derivation of the term is:

F blet (fem. blette) overripe (var. of OF blece, adj. deriv. of blecier to bruise ‹ Old Low Franconian *blettian) + -ing

Of course, the process of bletting had been known for centuries before this. Geoffrey Chaucer alludes to bletting in his 14th century Tales of Caunterbury (lines 3871–3873). Shakespeare in Measure for Measure, he alluded to bletting when he wrote (IV. iii. 167) "They would have married me to the rotten Medler". There is also an old saying, used in Don Quixote, that "time and straw make medlars ripe", referring to the bletting process.

The exact chemical mechanism involved remains elusive, but broadly, enzymes in the fruit break down complex carbohydrates into simple sugars such as fructose and glucose, and it becomes richer in malic acid – the main culprit behind the sour taste of other fruits such as apples. Meanwhile, harsh tannins, which contribute to the bitter astringency of younger red wines, and antioxidants such as ascorbic acid (Vitamin C), are depleted.