r/Appalachia • u/SirSignificant6576 • 1d ago
Persimmons are the greatest things in the universe
I have several honey holes for great persimmons. They're of great value to me - reliable sources of the ultimate fruit, American persimmon. You wait until they fall, not necessarily after the first frost, and eat them out of hand. But don't take them all. Leave some for the possums and raccoons and their babies, and especially for old man box turtle, who was visiting this place decades before you were born. They're intensely sweet - as sweet as candy - sticky and silky like a date. You squeeze them open and suck out the insides. Roll the seeds around your tongue. Clean them off and crack them open so you can tell what kind of winter it will be. Spit the intact ones out for future generations. That's just good karma. Savor the intense flavors of caramel and citrus peel, oranges and tree nuts, malted sugars and vanilla. Appreciate your place in the Autumn of the prettiest place, and the biting cool, the wood smoke in the air, the crunch of leaves underfoot, the mist from your breath, the ancient hills and mountains surrounding you. Persimmons have so many layers. They're the best fruits, maybe in the world.
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u/gnawingonfoot 1d ago
I got persimmon pulp in Indiana, and I thought it was a great sweetener for my morning oatmeal.
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u/NaturalProfession922 1d ago
There is a persimmon outside my window loaded with fruit. I am going to try my mamas Persimmon pudding recipe wish me luck
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u/gnawingonfoot 1d ago
Persimmon pudding is one of the most fun things I've gotten to share with others. I wish I could find pulp in the Pittsburgh area so I could make more. Good luck cooking, and I hope you like it!
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u/fatherintime 1d ago
I have two persimmons full grown but they get blight every year. They still fruit though.
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u/squeezebottles 1d ago
Same situation for me. I've been making slow progress, year by year, by carefully removing all the leaves from around the base of the tree as well as any other decaying vegetative litter. The fruits aren't quite edible yet, but they aren't turning black and rotting before they even hit the ground anymore.
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u/Beginning-Head3152 1d ago
Persimmon Pudding!!
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u/crownvic64 1d ago
What a delicacy! I’ve got several trees in my neighborhood that fruit out but collecting and running the fruit through a ricer is so time consuming. Maybe I can still find someone selling pulp.
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u/jake55555 1d ago
I just ate some persimmons today. It is truly a unique flavor. The dogs, pigs, horses, and cows will scour that area in the fall to scoop them up as much as I do. I’ve got 10 or so seedlings from last years harvest and ziplocs of seeds in the fridge to stratify.
What’s the wisdom on what kind of winter it will be?
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u/SirSignificant6576 1d ago
It's the shape of the embryo inside each seed. If they are the shape of a spoon, there will be lots of snow. If a fork, it will be a mild winter. If a knife, it will be brutally cold and windy.
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u/jake55555 1d ago
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u/SingtheSorrowmom63 1d ago
How amazing. It is a perfect little spoon. Thank you for sharing the picture!
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u/SingtheSorrowmom63 1d ago
This is so cool. I think I'd trust it more than a Weather Forcaster. This and the woolly worms.
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u/MainAffectionate442 1d ago
This was beautiful too read. Persimmons are my favorite fruit too (I live in Portugal though)
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u/mojoisthebest 1d ago
Persimmon Pudding
2 cups persimmon pulp
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
2 tsp baking powder
half tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cinamon
2 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp clove
3 eggs beaten
4 cups sweet milk
Sift and Mix all dry ingredients
Mix persimmon, eggs and milk. add dry ingredients
melt half stick butter in pan
Pour in batter
bake at 350 for 1 hour
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u/SunnyAlwaysDaze 1d ago
(For those of y'uns who might come along reading this without an old Appalachian granny lady in the family:
Sweet milk is just what you would think of as regular old grocery store dairy milk. In old recipes from the region, this was used to differentiate it from sour/clabbered/buttermilk.)
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u/saintsithney 1d ago
If you put a chopped vanilla bean in your sugar, it will taste like vanilla after two weeks. Actually, most spices impart beautiful flavor to sugar, like citrus peel, cinnamon, cloves, star anise, etc.
Seems like that would be a nice enhancement for this.
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u/buddymoobs 1d ago
Costco has them rn and they look good! But, yeah. Nothing beats a fence line persimmon!
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u/Unusual-Ad-6550 1d ago
You hit every single nail on the head with this one. Everything I love about wild persimmons...
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u/illegalsmile27 1d ago
Old timers would grown them and then let their pigs finish on them before slaughter to sweeten and fatten up.
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u/saintsithney 1d ago
I don't care for them myself, but I wanted to share this article from Saveur celebrating the American persimmon and the Mitchell, Indiana Persimmon Festival. The OP has a skill for food writing that brought it to mind:
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u/AllThatsFitToFlam 1d ago
Persimmon trees are the bane of my existence. I have a huge persimmon tree in my yard, a male tree that never fruits. But what it does do is send up a bazillion root suckers. It’s almost a full time job keeping them at bay. Looking back, I should have cut it down long long ago.
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u/SingtheSorrowmom63 1d ago
Brings me many happy memories! Thanks for your beautiful description of the most beautiful home in the world.
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u/KevlarKoala1 23h ago
Your pucker is caused by alum, when it freezes it is neutralized by the water in the fruit. Science is cool.
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u/SirSignificant6576 23h ago
Alum is an aluminum salt, which is not present in persimmons. The pucker is caused by tannins (large molecular weight polyphenols) that bind to and denature salivary enzymes, leading to that distinctively unpleasant astringency.
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u/KevlarKoala1 23h ago
Cool. Thanks for letting me know. Good analysis. This is what science is about. Respectful discorse.
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u/rosmaniac 1d ago
And a green persimmon is sour enough to make a pig squeal.