I’m glad you found your way to our medlars, and am very interested to hear that the fruits are not cooked in Iran. I haven’t cooked with them myself—I think that they are delicious softened and rotten-ripe, and are very good with fortified wines. The liquor made with vodka sounds intriguing. We did not have as good a crop last autumn as we had the year before, but I look forward to next year. I’m also growing medlars at my country place upstate, but they are not bearing yet—it is in the mountains and the winter there is long and cold, which slows everything down.

Thank you very much for the information about capers—I had not known that they were considered aphrodisiac. It has been a long time since I have had the happiness of visiting Etruria, and envy you your caper-covered dwelling-place.

About the capers…they grow spontaneously on all the south facing walls of this town and nearby Villa Lante, the magnificent Renaissance gardens. The cardinals who lived there enjoyed them (they considered them aphrodosiac) as well as sorbets for they had an underground “snow house” too.

Capers, Capparis spinosa, of which both the pickled flower buds and the fruits or berries are eaten, are discussed in the medieval health handbook known as the Tacuinum Sanitatis, or Tables of Health. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacuinum_sanitatis

The handbook deals with dietary prescriptions for balancing the four humors in individuals of different ages, temperaments, and conditions. According to the Tacuinum, capers are of medicinal value for their warming and drying properties.

Based on an eleventh-century Arabic medical treatise, the work survives in three complete illuminated manuscripts, all of which were produced in Italy in the late fourteenth century. These are now in Paris, Vienna, and the Casanatense Library in Rome.

According to Luisa Cogliati Arano, both the Paris and the Casatenense manuscripts characterize capers as warm in the third degree and dry in the second. Their warming and drying qualities are said to be medicinally useful in reducing the quantity of urine, although they also reduce blood and sperm, which is considered a detriment. The danger of the latter is said to be neutralized by consuming them with vinegar.

The Vienna manuscript, which lists capers as warm in the second degree, has a fuller explication of their medicinal virtues. They are said to help the stomach and increase the appetite, remove occlusions of the liver and the spleen, and kill worms. According to this manuscript, they are difficult to digest and should be cooked with oil, vinegar, and aromatic spices. Capers are also said to heat the blood and to be suitable for people with cold temperaments, for consumption in winter and in cold regions, and for both old people and children. (Luisa Cogliati Arano, The Medieval Health Handbook: Tacuinum Sanitatis, 1976)

You should not have to wait too long; medlars have a propensity to fruit early. The first crop might be very sparse, but your tree should come on quickly after that. We had considerably more fruit on our three-year old medlars this year than last. We bletted the medlars in baskets lined with clean wheatstraw and left them in the cool of the Gardens shed until they were soft—we had stored them away in the second week of November, and they were ready to eat by the end of the first week in December. We put them out on the dessert table for a holiday staff party here at the Museum last Friday, and they were quickly eaten up.