Apple of the Week - Bramley

Malus domestica 'Bramley's Seedling' (commonly known as the Bramley apple, or simply Bramley,

Bramley Apples

Bramleys or Bramley's) is a cultivar of apple which is usually eaten cooked due to its sourness. The Concise Household Encyclopedia states, "Some people eat this apple raw in order to cleanse the palate, but Bramley's seedling is essentially the fruit for tart, pie, or dumpling."  Once cooked, however, it has a lighter flavour. A peculiarity of the variety is that when cooked it becomes golden and fluffy.


'Bramley's Seedling' apple trees are large, vigorous, spreading and long-lived. They tolerate some shade. The apples are very large, two or three times the weight of a typical dessert apple such as a Granny Smith. They are flat with a vivid green skin which becomes red on the side which receives direct sunlight. The tree is resistant to apple scab and mildew and does best when grown as a standard in somewhat heavy clay soil. It is a heavy and regular bearer, and as a triploid, it has sterile pollen. It needs a pollenizer but cannot pollenize in return, so it is normally grown with two other varieties of apple for pollination. It has won many awards and currently holds the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit (H4).

Most of the stock of 'Bramley's Seedling' commercially available is slightly different in its growth habit and other characteristics from the original tree, probably because of a chance mutation (or mutations) that occurred unnoticed over the years. Plants produced from the still-surviving (then 180-year-old) tree by tissue culture in 1990 have proved to be much more compact and free-branching than the widely available commercial stock. The cloning work was done by scientists at the University of Nottingham, because the original tree was suffering from old age and was under attack by honey fungus. Twelve of the cloned trees now grow in the University grounds; one was also planted beside the old tree at Southwell.



Bramley apples work well in pies, cooked fruit compotes and salads, crumbles, and other dessert dishes. They are also used in a variety of chutney recipes, as well as in cider making. Whole Bramley apples, cored and filled with dried fruit, baked, and then served with custard is an inexpensive and traditional British pudding. Cooked apple sauce is the traditional accompaniment to roast pork. Hot apple sauce goes very well with ice cream.

Regardless of the dish, Bramley apples are generally cooked in the same basic way. First the fruit is peeled and then sliced, and the pieces covered in lemon juice (or some other acidic juice) to stop them turning brown. Sugar is usually added. In pies and crumbles, the fruit is simply covered with the topping and baked; the moisture in the apples is sufficient to soften them while cooking. The flavor may be spiced, according to taste, with cloves or cinnamon. To make apple sauce, the apples are sliced and then stewed with sugar and lemon juice in a saucepan.

'Bramley's Seedling' apples are favored for producing a jelly which is very pale in color. Because the tree is a heavy cropper and liable to glut, it is a fine candidate for the domestic production of fruit wine, alone or with other fruits, and cider.