The ‘Beefing’ Apples Story, 1850 – 1899

Welcome to chapter two of the ‘Beefing’ Apples Story. I’ve split this lengthy chapter into several parts. In part one, I’ll be discussing the name-variants that were applied to the ‘Beefing’ apples in the second half of the nineteenth century, and introducing the famed Victorian-era pomologist Dr. Robert Hogg. In parts two to four, I’ll explore Dr Hogg’s involvement in the stories of all three ‘Beefing’ apples: his insistence on the ‘Norfolk Beefing’ name-variant, and how that resulted in a bout of literary fisticuffs; his attempts to revive and re-popularise ‘Striped Beefing’; and his central role in the origin story of ‘Herefordshire Beefing’.

Please note: this is one part of one chapter of a much longer series of articles exploring the story of Norfolk Biffins and ‘Beefing’ Apples. Please see the main Table of Contents page for links to the other chapters in this story.

Contents of Chapter Two

Part One: The ‘Beefing’ Apples Story, 1850 – 1899 <<You Are Here>>
– ‘Beefing’ Apples in Second Half of the Nineteenth Century Sources
— Second Half of the Nineteenth Century Source Material
— ‘Beefing’ Apple Name-Variants in Second Half of the Nineteenth Century Sources
– Meet Dr. Robert Hogg, Champion of the British ‘Beefing’
— Dr. Hogg and the Naming of the ‘Beefing’ apples
— ‘Beefing vs ‘Beaufin’, the First Bout
— ‘Beefing’ vs ‘Beaufin’ (vs ‘Biffin’), the U.S. Rematch
— ‘Beefing’ (Eventually) Victorious!
– A Few Notes on the Significance of Synonyms
— Say Goodbye to ‘Winter Colman’
— The Tale of Taliesin
— Summing Up Synonym Significance
– Dr. Hogg’s Further ‘Beefing’ Adventures
— Dr. Hogg and ‘Striped Beefing’
— Dr. Hogg and ‘Herefordshire Beefing’
– ‘Beefing’ Apples, Chapter Two: Summary

Part Two: Dr. Hogg vs. “Pyrus” – ‘Beefing’ vs. ‘Beaufin’
– A Very Gentlemanly Bout of Fisticuffs
– A Particularly Beefy ‘Beefing’?
– Can We Declare a Winner on Points?
– “Pyrus” … Unmasked?

Part Three: Dr. Hogg and the Rediscovery of ‘Striped Beefing’
– The Return of a Forgotten ‘Beefing’
– Hogg’s Plan for ‘Striped Beefing’?
— Mr. Hogg and Mr. Rivers
– Was Hogg’s ‘Striped Beefing’ Plan a Success?
— ‘Striped Beefing’ Added to the Chiswick Garden
— ‘Striped Beefing’ in Print at Home
— ‘Striped Beefing’ in Print Overseas
— ‘Striped Beefing’ at the R.H.S. Exhibitions
– Chapter Two, Part Three, Summary and Conclusions

The final part of this chapter, Dr. Hogg, Dr. Bull and the Origins of the ‘Herefordshire Beefing’, will be added and linked to here once it has been edited and posted to the site.

‘Beefing’ Apples in Second Half of the Nineteenth Century Sources

The nineteenth century, and the second half of the nineteenth century in particular, was pomology’s golden era. The growth of interest in fruit and fruit growing here in the United Kingdom was fuelled by various factors, ranging from periods of agricultural depression¹When the price of staples like wheat and corn was low – usually due to greater availability of cheap overseas imports – farmers often turned to their orchards as a means of sustaining their income., to mass industrialisation and the development of the railway network²1850 is the date that marks the start of what Gerry Barnes and Tom Williamson, in English Orchards (2022), call “the orchard century”; a period of intense planting and growth of orchards in England that coincided with and was driven by the development of industrialised methods of fruit distribution and processing., to the rise of the concept of the dessert³‘Dessert’ was originally a final course of fresh or preserved fruits and nuts, often served at the very end of the meal, after the pudding course. As the hosts of dinner parties – mostly the landed gentry and nobility – sought to out-do each other with the impressive range of fresh fruits they could offer their guests, there was a corresponding interest in raising varied varieties of apples, pears, peaches, plums and more exotic fruits in the estate’s own orchards and fruit houses. course as the grand finale of the middle- and upper-class dining table.

The growth of interest in fruit growing led to an increase in the number of expert pomologists and the volume of their written output. Some of the very finest examples of the ‘pomona’ – often lavishly illustrated books, or large folio volumes, dedicated to detailing select varieties and cultivars of fruit – were written and published over the course of the nineteenth century. Original editions of some of these works are now incredibly valuable collectors’ items, changing hands for hundreds, even thousands of pounds at auction⁴By way of an example: at time of writing there are two first edition copies of Hugh and Elizabeth Ronalds’ Pyrus Malus Brentfordiensis (1831) for sale via abebooks that are offered for upwards of $4,000 (approx. £3,000) apiece. And a bound, two-volume first edition of The Herefordshire Pomona (1876 – 1885) recently went under the auctioneer’s hammer in the UK, at an estimated sale price of £3,000 – £4,000 (although I’m not sure if it sold or what the final sale price was… it all depends on the meaning of “hammer price passed” on the-saleroom.com.)..

A good number of the works of pomology that were published in the second half of the nineteenth century have survived in libraries, museums and private collections around the world. Their copyright periods have long expired, and so many have been digitised and made freely available online. This means there are plenty of accessible sources that refer to the three main members of the ‘Beefing’ group of apples – ‘Norfolk Beefing’, ‘Striped Beefing’ and ‘Herefordshire Beefing’ – and their many synonyms, which makes it relatively easy to track the trends and changes in the preference for particular name-variants across the period.

Second Half of the Nineteenth Century Source Material

Instances of the ‘Beefing’ Group of apples in English language sources⁵Non-English language sources will be examined in a later chapter. published 1850 – 1899 are listed below. To skip the list and continue with the main narrative please click here.

Key:
— = a primary name-variant, according to the source in question.
-s- = a synonym name-variant of the primary above it.
-t- = a translated name-variant of the primary above it.
(+) = a change or update since the previous edition of the source.

1850 – Cranston, James and John – Priced Catalogue of Hardy Trees and Shrubs, Cultivated for Sale by James and John Cranston
— Beaufin, Norfolk

1850 – Glenny, George – Hand-Book to the Fruit and Vegetable Garden
— Norfolk Beaufin
-s- Cat’s Head Beaufin
-s- Read’s Baker

1850 – Loudon Jane (ed.) & Loudon, John Claudius – An Encyclopedia of Gardening, new edition
— Norfolk Beafing
— Norfolk Beaufin
— Norfolk Colman
— Norfolk Storing
— Striped Beaufin (+) (Recommended by Robert Thompson)

1850/57 – McArthur, William – Catalogue of Plants at Campden Park, NSW, Australia
– Norfolk Beaufin

1851 – Emmons, Ebeneezer – Report on the Agriculture of the State of New York
— Norfolk Beaufin

1851 – Hogg, Robert – British Pomology
— Norfolk Beefing
-s- Norfolk Beaufin
-s- Norfolk Beau-fin
-s- Norfolk Beefin
-s- Reeds Baker
-s- Catshead Beaufin
— Striped Beefing
-s- Striped Beaufin
— Winter Colman
-s- Norfolk Colman
-s- Norfolk Storing

1852 – Wilson, Rev. John M. The Rural Cyclopedia
— Norfolk Beaufin
— Norfolk Storing

1852 – The Lawsonian Collection. Synopsis of the Vegetable Products of Scotland in the Museum of the Royal Botanic Gardens of Kew
— Norfolk Bearer
— Norfolk Beaufin
-s- Cats’ Head Beaufin
-s- Norfolk Biffin
-s- Read’s Baker
— Striped Beaufin
— Winter Colman
-s- Norfolk Coleman
-s- Norfolk Storing

1853 – Horticultural Society of London – Catalogue of Fruits Cultivated in the Garden of the Horticultural Society of London, at Chiswick, 3rd Edition, Supplement (ed. Robert Thompson?) via Hort Soc London Journal Vol 8 –
— Striped Beaufin (+)

1853 – Rivers, Thomas – Descriptive Catalogue of Fruits
— Norfolk Bearer
— Norfolk Beaufin
— Striped Reefing (surely a mis-print?)

1854 – Elliott, Franklin Reuben – Elliott’s Fruit Book; Or, The American Fruit-grower’s Guide in Orchard and Garden
— Norfolk Beaufin
-s- Read’s Baker
-s- Catshead Beaufin

1854 – Hayward, J. correspondent to Cottage Gardener and Country Gentleman’s Companion
— Striped Beefing

1855 – McIntosh, Charles – The Book of the Garden
— Norfolk Biffin
— Norfolk Beaufin
— Striped Beaufin

1855, 1857, 1860 – Rivers, Thomas – Descriptive Catalogue of Fruits
— Norfolk Bearer
— Norfolk Beaufin
— Striped Beaufin or Beefing
— Winter Colman

1857 – Hooper, E. J. – Hooper’s Western Fruit Book
– Norfolk Beaufin

1858 – Davies, Dr. – via The Florist, Fruitist, and Garden Miscellany Volume 11
— Taliesin

1858 – The Gardener’s Chronicle vol 18 (London?) Horticultural Society General Meeting for the Exhibition of Fruit and Flowers
— Norfolk Beaufin

1859 – Hogg, Robert – The Apple and its Varieties (reprint of British Pomology (1851), same details)
— Norfolk Beefing
-s- Norfolk Beaufin
-s- Norfolk Beau-fin
-s- Norfolk Beefin
-s- Reeds Baker
-s- Catshead Beaufin
— Striped Beefing
-s- Striped Beaufin
— Winter Colman
-s- Norfolk Colman
-s- Norfolk Storing

1859 – Rivers, Thomas – The Miniature Fruit Garden
— Striped Beefing
— Norfolk Bearer

1859 – Thompson, Robert – The Gardener’s Assistant Practical and Scientific
— Norfolk Beaufin
-s- Norfolk Beefin
-s- Norfolk Beefing
-s- Catshead Beaufin
-s- Read’s Baker
— Striped Beaufin
-s- Striped Beefing

1860 – Hogg, Robert – The Fruit Manual 1st edition
— Norfolk Bearer
— Norfolk Beefing
-s- Catshead Beefing
-s- Read’s Baker
— Striped Beefing
— Winter Colman
-s- Norfolk Colman
-s- Norfolk Storing

1860 – Knight, Charles – The English Cyclopedia, Arts and Sciences V
— Norfolk Beaufin

1860 – William Rollisson and Sons – Descriptive Catalogues of Hardy and Orchard-House Fruits
— Norfolk Beaufin
— Striped Beaufin

1860 – Smith, John – The Principles and Practice of Vegetarian Cookery
— Norfolk Biffin (copied from Acton)

1861 – Alexander Campbell and Sons, Glasnevin, Dublin – Descriptive Catalogue of Roses, Hollyhocks, Pansies and Fruit Trees
— Norfolk Bearer
— Norfolk Beaufin
— Striped Beefing

1861, 1863 – “The Editors and Contributors of The Cottage Gardener” – The Garden Manual 6th and 7th edtns
— Norfolk Beefing
— Striped Beefing

1862 – Hogg, Robert – The Fruit Manual 2nd edition
— Norfolk Bearer
— Norfolk Beefing
-s- Catshead Beefing
-s- Read’s Baker
-s- Taliesin (+)
— Striped Beefing
— Winter Colman
-s- Norfolk Colman
-s- Norfolk Storing

1862 – De Breuil, Alphonse, trans. Wardle, William – The Science and Practice of Grafting, Pruning, and Training Fruit Trees 1st edition
— Norfolk Beefing
— Striped Beefing

1862-1864 – Royal Horticultural Society – Catalogue of Fruits Cultivated in the Garden of the Royal Horticultural Society of London, at Chiswick, 4th edition, via Proceedings of the Royal Horticultural Society Vols 2 to 4, (Chiswick catalogue split into multiple parts)
— Beaufinette
— Norfolk Bearer (+)
— Norfolk Beaufin (“Baked in ovens, this sort forms the sweetmeats called “Norfolk Biffins” (+))
-s- Norfolk Beefing (+)
-s- Norfolk Beau-Fin (+)
-s- Cat’s Head “(of some)”
-s- Cat’s Head Beaufin
-s- Read’s Baker,
— Norfolk Paradise
-s- Millmount Beaufin
— Suffolk Beaufin
— Striped Beaufin
— Winter Colman
-s- Norfolk Coleman
-s- Norfolk Storing
-s- Norfolk Storny

1863 – Rivers, Thomas – Descriptive Catalogue of Fruits
— Norfolk Bearer
— Norfolk Beefing
— Striped Beefing
— Winter Colman

1863 – Horticultural Society of Victoria (Melbourne) – Catalogue of Fruit Trees, Experimental Garden, Survey Paddock, Richmond
— Norfolk Beefing
— Norfolk Bearer
— Striped Beefing
— Winter Colman

1865 – Cramb, A. – Letter to the Florist and Pomologist magazine
— Norfolk Beefing
— Striped Beefing

1865 – Webber, Messrs. (nurserymen)
— Striped Beefing

1866 – Bayle Bernard, Mrs, Our Common Fruits
— Norfolk Beau-fin

1866 – Hogg, Robert – The Fruit Manual 3rd edition
— Norfolk Bearer
— Norfolk Beefing
-s- Catshead Beefing
-s- Read’s Baker
-s- Taliesin
— Striped Beefing
— Winter Colman
-s- Norfolk Colman
-s- Norfolk Storing

1867 – Thomas, John Jacobs, The American Fruit Culturist
— Norfolk Beaufin

1867 – Watts, Elizabeth – The Orchard and Fruit Garden
— Norfolk Beaufin
-s- Norfolk Beefin
-s- Read’s Baker

1870 – T. Lang & Co. – Catalogue of Plants Cultivated for Sale by T. Lang & Co., Melbourne, Australia
— Norfolk Beaufin
— Norfolk Bearer
— Striped Beaufin

1870 – Royal Society of Tasmania – Papers and Proceedings and Report of the Royal Society of Tasmania for 1869
— Striped Beaufin

1871 – The Horticulturist, Or, The Culture and Management of the Kitchen, Fruit, & Forcing Garden – J. C. Loudon, ed. & rev. William Robinson
— Green Beefing
— Red or Striped Beefing

1872 – Downing, Andrew Jackson & Downing, Charles – The Fruits and Fruit Trees of America: Apples 2nd edition
— Norfolk Beaufin
-s- Norfolk Beefing
-s- Read’s Baker
-s- Catshead Baker
— Norfolk Storing

1872 – Smee, Alfred – My Garden Its Plan and Culture
— Norfolk Biffin

1872, 1874 – De Breuil, Alphonse, trans. Wardle, William – The Scientific and Profitable Culture of Fruit Trees … Adapted for English Cultivators by W. Wardle, 2nd and 3rd editions
— Norfolk Biffin
— Striped Biffin

1873 – Cassell’s Household Guide vol 1
— Norfolk Biffin (Beau-fin)

1873 – Scott, John – Scott’s Orchardist 2nd edition
— Norfolk Beefing
-s- Catshead Beaufin
-s- Norfolk Beaufin
-s- Reed’s Baker
-s- Taliesin
-s- Taliesman
— Striped Beefing
-s- Striped Beaufin
— Winter Colman
-s- Norfolk Storing
-s- Norfolk Colman

1875 – Herbert, F. W. (exhibitor at the Woolhope Naturalists Club fruit show) via Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists Club 1874-76 p. 133
— “Norfolk Biffin, or Beefing”

1875 – Hogg, Robert – The Fruit Manual 4th edition
— Norfolk Bearer
— Norfolk Beefing
-s- Norfolk Beaufin (+)
-s- Norfolk Beau-fin (+)
-s- Norfolk Beefin (+)
-s- Catshead Beaufin
-s- Reeds Baker
-s- Taliesin
— Striped Beefing
-s- Striped Beaufin (+)
— Winter Colman
-s- Norfolk Colman
-s- Norfolk Storing

1876 – 1885 – Bull, Henry Graves & Hogg, Robert – The Herefordshire Pomona
— Herefordshire Beefing
— Norfolk Beefing
-s- Norfolk Beaufin
-s- Norfolk Beefin
-s- Catshead Beaufin
-s- Read’s Baker
-s- Taliesin
— Striped Beefing
-s- Striped Beaufin
— Norfolk Storing
— Winter Coleman
-s- Norfolk Colman’s Bearer

1876 – Bulmer, Rev. H. C. in Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists Club 1874-76 p. 267
— Beefing

1877 – Royal Society of Tasmania – Papers and Proceedings and Report of the Royal Society of Tasmania for 1876
— Striped Beaufin

1877 – Wighton, J – correspondence to The Florist and Pomologist
— Norfolk Beefing
— Striped Beefing

1878 – Downing, Andrew Jackson & Downing, Charles – The Fruits and Fruit-Trees of America, second revision
— Norfolk Beaufin
-s- Read’s Baker
-s- Catshead Beaufin
-s- Norfolk Beefing
— Striped Beaufin
— Winter Colman
-s- Norfolk Colman
-s- Norfolk Storing

1879 – Bede, Cuthbert, correspondent to Notes and Queries
— Norfolk Bo-fine

1879 – Fish, David Taylor – The Apple; its History, Varieties and Cultivation
— Norfolk Beefing

1880 – Killick, Mr. – Exhibiting at Woolhope Naturalists Club
— Norfolk Beefing

1881 – Bull, Henry Graves & Hogg, Robert – The Herefordshire Pomona, subscriber edition, part IV
— Herefordshire Beefing
— Norfolk Beefing
— Striped Beefing

1881 – Meehan, Thomas – The Gardener’s Monthly and Horticulturist vol 23
— Norfolk Beafing

1881 Robertson, Dr. – Article in Proceedings of the Perthshire Society of Natural Science
— Norfolk Beaufin
— Striped Beaufin

1882 – Meehan, Thomas in The Gardener’s Monthly and Horticulturist Vol 24
— Discussion of Beefing vs Beaufin vs Biffin

1882 – Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England vol 18
— Norfolk Beaufin

1882 – Royal Society of Tasmania – Papers and Proceedings and Report of the Royal Society of Tasmania for 1881
— Striped Beaufin

1883 – Cassel’s Dictionary of Cookery
— Red Biffin
— Norfolk Beefing or Biffin

1883 – Cranston’s Nursery and Seed Company (advertisement in the Gardener’s Chronicle for November 3rd 1883)
— “New” Herefordshire Beefing

1883 – Groom, James – The Apple in Orchard and Garden
— Beefing (Norfolk)
— Beefing, Striped

1883 – Hobday, Edward – Fruit Culture for Profit
— Norfolk Beefing
— Striped Beefing

1884 – Adamson, William – Adamson’s Australian Gardener
— Norfolk Beefing
— Striped Beefing

1884 – Barron, A. F. – British Apples: Report on the National Apple Congress of 1883
— Beaufinette
— Green Beefing = French Crab
— Herefordshire Beefing
— Norfolk Beefing
-s- Norfolk Bearer
-s- Norfolk Coleman
-s- Ramsden
-s- Red Beefing
-s- Winter Beefing
-s- Winter Coleman
— Norfolk Storing (also separate entry “Norfolk Storing see Golden Ball”)
— Striped Beefing
— Yellow Beefing
— Yorkshire Beefing “see Winter Majetin”

1884 – Hogg, Robert – The Fruit Manual, 5th edition
— Herefordshire Beefing (+)
— Norfolk Bearer
— Norfolk Beefing
-s- Norfolk Beaufing (typo?)
-s- Norfolk Beau-fin
-s- Norfolk Beefin
-s- Catshead Beaufin
-s- Reed’s Baker
-s- Taliesin
— Striped Beefing
-s- Striped Beaufin
— Winter Colman
-s- Black Jack (+)
-s- Norfolk Colman
-s- Norfolk Storing

1884 – The Gardener’s Magazine vol 27
— Norfolk Beaufin
— Striped Beaufin

1884 – Mr. LeTouzel, via Report of the Fruit Growers’ Association of Ontario for 1883
— Norfolk Beefin

1884 – Moore, Thomas (ed.) – The Florist and Pomologist, April issue
— Herefordshire Beaufin (Cranston Nursery)

1885 – ‘A.P.’ correspondence in The Field, or Gentleman’s Country Magazine 16th May
— Norfolk Beefing

1886 – Bull, Henry Graves & Hogg, Robert – The Apple and Pear as Vintage Fruits
— Herefordshire Beefing
— Norfolk Beefing

1886 – Coleman, W. (correspondence in The Garden vol 29, headed ‘Neglected Apples’)
— Herefordshire Beaufin
— Norfolk Beefing or Beaufin
— Striped Beaufin

1887 – Dunn, Malcolm – Report on the 1885 Royal Caledonian Apple and Pear Congress
— Norfolk Beefing
— Striped Beefing
— Norfolk Beaufin
— Striped Beaufin

1888 – Earley, William – correspondence to The Gardeners’ Chronicle
— Norfolk Beefin
— Striped Beefin

1888 – Barron, A. F. – British Apples Illustrated: Condensed Report on the National Apple Congress of 1883 and the Apple and Pear Conference of 1888
(Combined 1883 and 1888 Congress & Conference lists)
— Beaufinette
— Herefordshire Beefing
— Norfolk Beefing
-s- Norfolk Bearer
-s- Norfolk Colman
-s- Ramsden
-s- Red Beefing
-s- Winter Coleman
-s- Winter Beefing
— Norfolk Storing, (also: “Norfolk Storing, see Golden Ball”)
-s- Dolphine
-s- Golden Ball
— Striped Beefing
— Yorkshire Beefing “see Winter Majetin”

1888 – Morris, D & Wilkes, Rev. W. – ‘Report of the Apple and Pear Conference October 1888’ in Journal of the RHS Vol X
— German Apple (Cranston Nursery “resembles Striped Beefing”)
— Green Beefing
— Herefordshire Beefing
— Miller’s Glory (“resembles Norfolk Beefing”)
— Norfolk Beaufin (mention only, no listing)
— Norfolk Beefing
-s- Norfolk Bearer
-s- Norfolk Coleman
-s- Norfolk Colman
-s- Ramsden
-s- Red Beefing
-s- Winter Coleman
-s- Winter Beefing
— Striped Beefing
— Yellow Beefing
— Yorkshire Beefing

1889 – The Victoria Department of Agriculture Bulletin no.5
— Norfolk Beefing
— Striped Beefing

1890 – Garrett, Theodore Francis – Garrett’s Encyclopaedia of Practical Cookery vol 1
— Norfolk Beefing
— Norfolk Beau-fine

1890 – Journal of Horticulture, Cottage Gardener and Home Farmer vol 21
(report on the Crystal Palace Fruit Show)
— Striped Beaufin (exhibited by Mr McIndoe)
— Herefordshire Beaufin (exhibited by Samuel Barlow)

1891 – A Handbook of the Destructive Insects of Victoria – Charles French
— Striped Beaufin

1891 – The Fruit Growers Guide – John C. Wright
— Striped Beefing (illustration by May Rivers)

1892 – Wythes, G. – correspondence to The Garden magazine, volume 41
— Norfolk Beaufin
— Striped Beaufin

1892 – Cheal, Joseph – Practical Fruit Culture 1st edtn
— Striped Beaufin

1893 – Crichton, David Alexander – The Australasian Fruit Culturist
— Norfolk Beefing
-s- Norfolk Beaufin
-s- Catshead Beefing
-s- Read’s Baker
— Striped Beefing

1894 – R.H.S. Autumn Fruit Show Exhibition
— Herefordshire Beefing
— Striped Beefing

1895 – Amherst, Alicia – A History of Gardening in England
— Norfolk Beefin

1895 – R.H.S. Autumn Fruit Show Exhibition
— Norfolk Beefing
— Striped Beefing

1895 – Smith, B. E. and Whitney, W. D. – The Century Dictionary
— Biffin
-s- Beefin
-s- Beefen = “dialect corruption of Beefing”
-s- Beaufin (false etymology)

1895 – U.S. Congressional Serial Set
— Norfolk Biffin

1896 – R.H.S. Autumn Fruit Show Exhibition
— Norfolk Beefing
— Norfolk Black Jack
— Striped Beefing

1896 – Lloyd, F. J. – ‘Investigations into the Manufacture of Cider’, in Bath and West and Southern Counties Society’s Journal
— Hereford Beefing

1896 – Lodeman, Ernest Gustavus – Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin #116: Dwarf Apples
— Striped Beaufin

1896 – Watkins, J. in Journal of the R.H.S. vol 20
— Herefordshire Beefing

1898 – Bunyard, George & Co. – Catalogue of Fruit Trees Cultivated by George Bunyard & Co., Royal Nurseries, 1898-99
— Striped Beefing

1898 – Ottawa Department of Agriculture – Catalogue of Fruit Trees at Central Experimental Farm
— Norfolk Beefing
— Striped Beaufin

‘Beefing’ Apple Name-Variants in Second Half of the Nineteenth Century Sources

Looking through the many sources listed above, it’s possible to identify two main schools of thought as to the appropriate name-variant suffix for these apples: one clearly prefers ‘Beaufin’, and the other ‘Beefing’.

In one corner, the ‘Beaufin’ school comprised those who followed what I like to think of as the “orthodox” or “Chiswick” naming scheme, as set out in the Catalogue of Fruits Cultivated in the Garden of the Horticultural Society of London, at Chiswick. The Society was founded in 1802 and became the Royal Horticultural Society from 1861. At the start of the second half of the nineteenth century, the Chiswick Garden’s collection was cared for under the curatorial auspices of Mr. Robert Thompson; himself a devotee of the Chiswick school, as you’d expect, and as can be seen in his own work The Gardener’s Assistant Practical and Scientific (1859).

In the other corner, there was the ‘Beefing’ school, whose captain and great champion was a formidable-sounding Scotsman, a pomologist who was seemingly set on a mission to set straight the record as he saw it, and a man who certainly wasn’t going to take any challenges lying down… and we’ll meet the esteemed Dr. Robert Hogg in the next section of this chapter.

There was also perhaps a third, much smaller school: those who used ‘Biffin’ or ‘Norfolk Biffin’ to name the apple, rather than close variants of ‘Beefing’ or ‘Beaufin’. Most of those who used ‘Biffin’ seem to have been writers of cookery books – for example John Smith’s The Principles and Practice of Vegetarian Cookery (1860) – and so they were probably influenced by earlier cookery writers such as Eliza Acton or Mary Rundell who, as I talked about in the Norfolk Biffins Story, were among the first writers to apply the term ‘Biffin’ to the apple itself, rather than to the baked apple sweetmeat. Other mentions of ‘Biffin’ were found in books on general horticulture – such as Charles McIntosh with The Book of the Garden (1855) or Alfred Smee’s My Garden Its Plan and Culture (1872) – rather than pomology or fruit culture specifically.

Most writers remained consistent in their preferred name-variant, but an example of someone switching schools can be found in the two editions of William Wardle’s English translation of The Scientific and Profitable Culture of Fruit Trees by Alphonse Du Breuil. In the 1862 first edition, entitled The Science and Practice of Grafting, Pruning, and Training Fruit Trees, Wardle – who added new material to make the work relevant to a British audience – recommends ‘Norfolk Beefing’ and ‘Striped Beefing’ as culinary apples. However, in the second and third editions of 1872 and 1874, the names have been changed to ‘Norfolk Biffin’ and ‘Striped Biffin’. I can only wonder what inspired Wardle to make the switch.⁶Perhaps he sampled a dried apple sweetmeat or two between editions and became an instant convert to the School of ‘Biffin’?

A few other synonyms and name-variants crop up during the period, but most of these are probably just slight variations in spelling, pronunciation, or possible typographical errors, rather than being distinct enough to be classed as name-variants in their own right. Examples include:

• ‘Norfolk Beafing’ in Jane Loudon’s An Encyclopedia of Gardening new edition (1850); the same volume also includes ‘Norfolk Beaufin’ and ‘Striped Beaufin’.
• ‘Striped Reefing’ which was surely a mis-print in the 1853 catalogue of Thomas Rivers’ nursery firm.
• Likewise ‘Norfolk Beaufing’, rather than ‘Norfolk Beaufin’, which was listed as a synonym of ‘Norfolk Beefing’ in the 5th edition of Robert Hogg’s The Fruit Manual (1884).
• ‘Norfolk Storny’, given as a synonym of ‘Winter Colman’ (which in turn was later identified as a synonym of ‘Norfolk Beefing’) in the 4th edition of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chiswick Garden catalogue.

Then there are the likes of ‘Norfolk Beau-fin’, ‘Norfolk Bo-fine’, and ‘Norfolk Beau-fine’ which I suspect are all attempts to note down a dialect version of ‘Beaufin’ in some sort of phonetic manner⁷There will be more on this subject in a later chapter on the potential etymology of the term ‘Beefing’., Similarly, we see the occasional ‘Beefin’ and ‘Beefen’ as variants of ‘Beefing’ and these could also be dialect or spelling variations. In fact, this was explicitly suggested by the editors of the American Century Dictionary (1889), whose entry for ‘Biffin’ reads:

“biffin (bif’in), n. [Also spelled beefin, beefen (and, by a false etym., beaufin, as if < F. beau, beautiful, + fin, fine); a dial. corruption of beefing, < beef + -ing : so called from the red color of the apple.] 1. An excellent cooking-apple cultivated in England, especially in the county of Norfolk. It is often sold in a dried and flattened condition. Hence — 2. A baked apple crushed into a flat round cake.”

These declarations of “beaufin” as “false etym[ology]”, and “beefin, beefen” as “a dial[ect] corruption” of “beefing” would, I’m sure, have greatly pleased one very particular nineteenth century pomologist, whose acquaintance it is time for us to make.

Meet Dr. Robert Hogg, Champion of the British ‘Beefing’

One of the pre-eminent pomologists and pomological authors of the second half of the nineteenth century was a nurseryman, horticulturist and orchardist from Aberdeen by the name of Dr. Robert Hogg⁸For a more detailed biography of Dr. Hogg, see The Book of Apples by Joan Morgan and Alison Richards (2011) pp. 109 – 112, and ‘The 150th anniversary of the publication of Robert Hogg’s Fruit Manual’ in volume four of the Occasional Papers From the RHS Lindley Library series (Oct 2010)., and it turns out that he had a very large part to play in the story of all three surviving members of the ‘Beefing’ group of apples.

Between the dates of his partnership in the Brompton Park Nursery, from 1842-c.1849-54⁹Brent Elliott, in his piece on Hogg in Occasional Papers From the Lindley Library no. 4, gives the earlier date for the end of Hogg’s involvement in the Brompton Park nursery business; Joan Morgan and Alison Richards, in The New Book of Apples suggest that he was at the nursery until it closed in 1854; and an obituary for Hogg in The Garden magazine for March 20th 1897 states that “the business of Gray Adams and Hogg continued till the dissolution of the concern in 1851”., and his death in 1897, Hogg wrote a number of highly influential pomological works, including British Pomology, Vol 1 – The Apple (1851)¹⁰This volume was the first of a planned, but uncompleted, series on the fruits of the British Isles; vol 2 – Pears was meant to follow but never saw the light of day., The Apple and Its Varieties (1859)¹¹A very close copy of British Pomology, suspected to be an attempt by his publisher to shift remaining stock before The Fruit Manual was published., and then five editions of The Fruit Manual (1860, 1862, 1866, 1875 and 1884). He jointly founded the Pomological Society of London in 1854 with Joseph Paxton, Thomas Rivers and others¹²The Horticultural Society of London formed their own Fruit Committee in 1858 and the Pomological Society of London in due course became the R.H.S. Fruit Committee., served alongside Dr. Henry Graves Bull as technical editor of The Herefordshire Pomona, which was published in seven subscription editions between 1876 and 1885, as well as the spin-off volume The Apple and Pear as Vintage Fruits (1886), was editor of magazines such as The Journal of Horticulture and Cottage Gardener, and Florist and Pomologist, was appointed superintendent of the R.H.S. Gardens at Chiswick, served on various R.H.S. fruit committees and was Secretary of the R.H.S. from 1875 to 1884 and continued as an R.H.S. Council member until 1889. And those are just the highlights and headlines of his long and extremely distinguished horticultural career.

When I began to research Dr. Hogg’s involvement in the ‘Beefing’ apples, I quickly discovered that he had played a leading role in the story of ‘Beefing’ becoming the dominant name-variant suffix, with reference to ‘Norfolk Beefing’ in particular; a smaller but still quite significant part in the story of ‘Striped Beefing’; and had been very heavily involved indeed in the origin story of ‘Herefordshire Beefing’. And, as we’ll see, he was particularly keen on one highly specific detail of the naming of these apples: that final ‘g’.

Dr. Hogg and the Naming of the ‘Beefing’ Apples

Dr. Robert Hogg had some quite definite opinions as to why we should be referring to ‘Beefing’ apples, rather than ‘Beaufin’ apples, ‘Biffin’ apples, or anything else, and he wasn’t at all shy in putting them forward. In fact, I’d go a far as to say that it was probably Hogg’s determination and force of personality that was responsible for ‘Beefing’ becoming, and remaining, the dominant version of the variety’s suffix, from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards. Without his influence, it is far more likely that we would still be talking about ‘Beaufin’ apples – ‘Beaufin’ is a name variant that I’ll be discussing in much more detail in the next two chapters – but from the start of his solo pomological publishing career, Hogg was quite definite that ‘Beaufin’ was absolutely not the correct name-variant suffix for this pair – at the time – of fine old Norfolk apples.

Hogg’s first publication as sole author was, as mentioned, British Pomology (1851), although this was technically the second work with which his name had been associated. During his tenure at the Brompton Park Nursery he was involved in the publication of the firm’s fruit catalogue, the Manual of Fruits. There are no editions of the Manual of Fruits currently available online, but I was able, thanks to the very kind assistance of one of the librarians of the R.H.S. Lindley Library, to gain access to the list of apples in the 1847 catalogue. There, on p.11, I found an entry for ‘Norfolk Beaufin’ – rather than ‘Norfolk Beefing’- with the synonyms ‘Catshead Beaufin’ and ‘Read’s Baker’. Sadly, no further description or detail of the apple was provided.

The use of the ‘Beaufin’ variant in this particular catalogue perhaps suggests that the other two Brompton Park partners were adherents to the already long-established Chiswick school of thought at the time, and presumably Hogg was either happy enough to go along with it, hadn’t formulated his opinion either way, or was too junior a partner to successfully argue for a change.

However, between the appearance of the Manual of Fruits in 1847 and the publication of British Pomology in 1851, something must have fixed the idea in Hogg’s mind that ‘Beefing’ was most definitely the correct name-variant. In British Pomology, the final paragraph of the entry on the ‘Norfolk Beefing’ leaves no room for doubt as to Hogg’s thoughts on the matter:

“The name of this apple has hitherto been written Beaufin, as if of French origin ; but it is more correctly Beefing, from the similarity the dried fruit presents to raw beef.”¹³Robert Hogg, British Pomology vol 1 (1851) p. 147

Hogg’s later publications all contained entries for one or more of the ‘Beefing’ apples, and the spelling is always consistently ‘Beefing’, with a ‘g’, and ‘Beaufin’ is always relegated to a synonym. The first was The Apple and Its Varieties (1859) which seems to be a straight re-print of British Pomology¹⁴I think I read somewhere that it might have been a simple re-titling by Hogg’s publisher in an attempt to shift stock of the old work before the first edition of Hogg’s The Fruit Manual was published in 1860 and so contains the same description. But in the first edition of The Fruit Manual (1860), Hogg included a much wider selection of fruits than just apples, and so the content of the chapter on apples was greatly condensed. ‘Norfolk Beefing’ and ‘Striped Beefing’ are both included, but they have much shorter descriptions and the particulars of the naming of ‘Norfolk Beefing’ aren’t mentioned.

The subsequent four editions of The Fruit Manual (1862, 1866, 1875 and 1884) grew steadily larger and more detailed, but Hogg didn’t re-introduce his full ‘Beefing’ descriptions until the fourth edition. By the time the fifth edition had been published, Hogg had not only found the space to reinstate his original statement on the etymology of ‘Beefing’ from British Pomology, but had expanded it to include an added note of John Bull-esque patriotism, along with a couple of detail changes with regard to the apple’s beef-like colouration:

“The name of this apple has hitherto been written Beaufin, as if of French origin ; but it is more correctly Beefing, with a good English ring, from the similarity the baked fruit presents to beef.”

The ‘Beefing’ now has “a good English ring”, has been cooked – presumably into a biffin? – and the beef is likewise no longer said to be raw, all of which sounds much more palatable. And surely that settles the matter, no?

Well, not quite, as not everyone agreed with Hogg’s etymological opinions. Indeed, one particular disagreement on the subject had already resulted in a public spat between Hogg and another, mysteriously anonymous, pomologist.

‘Beefing’ vs ‘Beaufin’, The First Bout

Following the publication of British Pomology, one of Hogg’s fellow pomologists, using the nome-de-plume “Pyrus” – their identity was, to the best of my knowledge, never revealed¹⁵Although I do have my own suspicions as to they might have been, which I shall reveal at the end of chapter two part two… – took great issue with Hogg’s theory as to the reasons for the naming of this particular apple, and sought to challenge him on it. They did so in no uncertain terms, via that most civilised of pugilistic arenas: the letters page of a horticultural journal of the day.

If you’re interested in the full, blow-by-blow account of how this particular bout of literary fisticuffs played out, please pause here to read part two of this chapter: Dr. Hogg vs. “Pyrus”, ‘Beefing’ vs. ‘Beaufin’. Otherwise, read on for a version that just provides the edited highlights.

The contest took place over a few weeks in March and April of 1853, and took the form of an exchange of correspondence in the letters page of The Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette, in which “Pyrus” and Hogg took great exception to each others’ theories, trading wordy blows on the subject on a near-weekly basis.

“Pyrus” opened the contest by declaring Hogg’s idea that the apple’s name derived from its beef-like appearance to be wholly incorrect and actually rather ridiculous. Instead, “Pyrus” insisted that it was called ‘Beaufin’ because it was of French origin, and that the term “beau-fin” meant an apple that was good (beau) at the end (fin) and hence should be considered a “finishing apple”; either finishing a meal, or perhaps finishing the apple season?

Hogg then riposted, taking a swing at “Pyrus” on the theme that ‘Beaufin’ is nothing but an unwieldy portmanteau of two French terms, one of which is a masculine word and the other a feminine one, and because never shall the twain meet en français, the portmanteau in question was highly grammatically incorrect and therefore ridiculous in turn. He then accused “Pyrus” of trying to be witty at someone else’s expense and making themselves look foolish in the process. Take that, Sirrah!

Hogg also had a tag-partner for the opening round of the bout. In the same issue of the magazine, a second correspondent weighed in in Hogg’s corner: one W. Mason, from Necton Hall in Norfolk, who, with a bit of further investigation on my part, turned out to be a retired Army Colonel.

Col. Mason declared that when he was a young man growing up in Norfolk the apple had always been known as a ‘Beefin’ and that it was Sir Joseph Banks who was responsible for the re-naming. More investigation followed, and I’m afraid I have to conclude that Sir Joseph’s involvement in the matter is unsubstantiated by any extant evidence. Perhaps Col. Mason had another eminent man of science in mind? In any case, the Colonel’s foray made it two-to-one in Hogg’s favour, on points at least.

“Pyrus” then responded again – and at considerable length – with an argument to the effect that that “a ramble among the orchards and gardens of Normandy” would reveal many apples named with little regard for the niceties of grammar, allegedly including whole orchards full of one labelled “beau a la fin”.¹⁶I’ve scoured the French sources that I have access to, and searched several online archives, but I have found no trace of such an apple, although I suspect that would still be claimed as a scored point by “Pyrus”, perhaps demonstrating his argument that many such apples would have gone unrecorded by the rustic growers of Normandy. He then went on to call British Pomology a “nice little book”, in a back-handed compliment of quite surpassing passive-aggressiveness. Touché!

Hogg, of course, was having none of it and replied with a painstaking, point-by-point demolition of his opponent’s arguments. Oh, and he proved himself to be not above a little tit-for-tat name-calling by labeling “Pyrus” an old man into the bargain.

“Pyrus”, his hackles up, came back for round three, insisting that his “unbleached hair” was still all his own, and repeating his preference for the Horticultural Society of London’s Chiswick Garden catalogue – and its consistent use of ‘Beaufin’ rather than ‘Beefing’ – which he declared to be “the most useful catalogue ever published”, far better than any other source. A slightly desperate defence, based on a weakening argument, perhaps? Was “Pyrus” already on the ropes?

If not, then he soon would be, as Hogg played something of a blinder, by issuing a put-up-or-shut-up challenge: let “Pyrus” set forth his argument that the apple was French and not English in a logical manner, with evidence to support his arguments, and prove “to the satisfaction of two respectable pomologists” that Hogg was in the wrong. Hogg nominated the author of the Chiswick catalogue – Chiswick Garden superintendent Robert Thompson – as his referee, and invited “Pyrus” to suggest another.

The outcome of this thrilling bout? Sadly, one of the editors of the magazine seems to have decided to call time on the contest before a definitive blow could be dealt. As a result, Hogg’s ultimate challenge went unaccepted, the contest was abandoned, and the whole affair was presumably left unresolved to the satisfaction of either pugilist¹⁷It certainly wasn’t resolved to mine….

Or was it? I do have a theory as to why this sudden halt might have been called, and it ties in with who I suspect might have been the man behind the “Pyrus” pseudonym. If you’re interested in finding out what my speculations might be, please see the section: “Pyrus” Unmasked? in part two of this chapter.

Beefing vs Beaufin (vs Biffin), the U.S. Rematch

A similar question as to the correctness or otherwise of ‘Norfolk Beefing’ arose some 30 years later, and was detailed in the ‘Scraps and Queries’ column of the July 1882 edition of The Gardener’s Monthly and Horticulturist. This was a U.S. publication edited by Thomas Meehan, a British-born botanist and nurseryman who later relocated to Philadelphia.

In an item titled “Beaufin, Biffin or Beefin”, Meehan describes a letter that seems to have originally been sent to another publication, the Gardener’s Magazine of London, by “a lady”, who wrote as follows:

“In an article on Biffins in the May number of your magazine (culled from the London Gardener’s Magazine) I was surprised to see the word Biffin spelled ‘Beefing’. Surely this is an error. My recollections of Norfolk Biffins date from nearly sixty years ago, when a child in England. An old friend of my father’s sent him yearly, as a Christmas offering from his home in Norwich (Norfolk), a box of Biffins, which box being opened with much ceremony (after the usual Christmas dinner), displayed layers of dark purplish cakes, about an inch and a half in thickness, and from eight to ten inches in diameter; every layer was separated by paper. The skin of these Biffins was glistening and moist, the inside resembling a rick, dark preserve. Chambers’ Encyclopaedia gives the word as Beaufin – or Biffin.”

I think I see what’s happened here: the correspondent in question has fondly remembered the Christmas gift-wrapped biffins of her childhood¹⁸A date “nearly sixty years ago” would be the mid 1820s, which was probably the heyday of Norwich bakers’ biffin production, when boxes of them were indeed sent around the country as Christmas gifts, as I talked about in the Norfolk Biffin Story. and has equated the name of the sweetmeat with the name of the apple, assuming they’re one and the same. This is entirely understandable and was probably very common outside of, and even sometimes within, pomological circles. For example, the Chambers Encyclopedia vol 1 (1871) does indeed say, within the entry for ‘Apple’:

“Beaufins or Biffins are apples slowly dried in bakers’ ovens, and occasionally pressed till they become soft and flat. They are prepared in great quantities in Norfolk.”

Here the editors have equated “Beaufins”; the apple variety, with “Biffins”; the sweetmeat, and again have assumed they’re essentially one and the same.

Back in the pages of The Gardener’s Monthly and Horticulturist, Mr. Meehan decided to help the lady out by launching in to a lengthy explanation as to what he thought was the appropriate orthography – essentially a technical term for the appropriate spelling – of the apple’s name, as follows:

“When making an extract, it is of course necessary to give the orthography as used. As to the correct orthography, we have never been able to satisfy ourselves as to the origin and meaning or the proper way of spelling the name. The writer of this is familiar with it for forty years, and it was then in the list as “Beefing”. “Beaufin” would indicate a French origin, but there is no such apple in any old French list. The description of an old French kind, Coeur de boeuf”, which we may translate as “ox-heart”, is very much like that of the “Beefing”, but the writer has never had the opportunity of examining this apple. If it were certainly a French apple, one might look for some such name as a Beef heart, or beef something or another, as a sort of translation of the French name. As to “Beaufin”, it is hardly likely Frenchmen would give it this name, as “beau” and “fin” have exactly the same meaning as we understand them. One old author writes the name “Norfolk Bœufin”, as if he had the French word for beef in mind. The earliest writer we find, who refers to this apple, is Thomas Hitt, who wrote in the beginning of the last century. In the text he calls it the Baffin apple, but as the French apple – Pomme-gris is written in the same work as Pomme Gree, we must not look on him as an authority in orthography.

Forsyth, in 1781, seems the first to use the word “Beaufin”, and this is followed by Lindley in his “Guide to the Orchard”, but without any other reason that we can see. One hundred years ago it was written by various persons Norfolk Beefing, Lincolnshire Beefing, Yorkshire Beefing, Catshead Beaufin, and Read’s Baker – the numerous names at that time seeming to indicate that its history has even then been lost.

From all these considerations it seems very difficult to get at the correct term. Perhaps some of our European contemporaries, with a better command of reference books than we can have at this distance, may be able to settle the question.

Since the above was written we have the following note from Mr Downing:

“‘The name of this apple is sometimes written Beaufin as if of French origin but it is correctly Beefing from the similarity the dried fruit presents to beef’ – (Hogg.)

These Beefins or Biffins may do very for Englishmen, but the Americans prefer canned or dessicated or evaporated fruits, and the Fall Pippin, for this purpose, is much superior to Norfolk Beaufin.” – Ed. G.M.”

Alas, Mr. Meehan’s response contains rather more enthusiasm than it does accuracy, although to be fair he does admit that he lacks the appropriate reference books. Firstly, I found an online copy of volume XXV of The Gardener’s Magazine, which covers January to December 1882, but there’s no sign within of the lady correspondent’s original letter, and the magazine is a weekly publication, so the “May number” that the lady mentioned doesn’t quite fit. Perhaps the letter was actually published in a different magazine, and Meehan confused the two? In which case, finding a response from the original magazine’s editors is going to be practically impossible.

Back to Meehan and those potential French language links which, again, are not as clear-cut as they first seem. Yes, “beau” and “fin” can mean the same thing, because “fin” could be translated to “fine”, but it can also means an end or a conclusion, as per the arguments put forward by “Pyrus” in that earlier spat with Robert Hogg.

Meehan does seem to be correct in saying that ‘Beaufin’ doesn’t appear in any French apple catalogues – or at least, I haven’t managed to find a single reference to ‘Beaufin’ or indeed any other ‘Beefing’ name-variants in any of the French pomology texts that I’ve encountered so far – and yes, ‘Coeur de Boeuf’ is indeed an old French variety, and one that I’ll be talking about in a later chapter. But I haven’t yet come across the use of “Bœufin” as a name-variant in any of the sources I’ve found to-date, so I have no idea which “old author” Meehan might have had in mind.

Further inaccurate references follow: Thomas Hitt actually mentioned a “Baffen Pippin”, not a “Baffin apple”, and whilst “Baffen” could, perhaps, be a spelling variant of “Beefin” – or maybe of “Beffin”, which does occur once or twice in the sources – it seems more likely to be derived from a place- or family-name.

As far as I know, Forsyth’s earliest publication date was 1791, not 1781, and the work in question didn’t include any lists of apple varieties. It seems more likely that Meehan was thinking of Forysth’s A Treatise on the Culture and Management of Fruit Trees – the first edition of which appeared in 1802 – which does include ‘Beaufin’, but Forsyth was far from the first writer to use this particular name-variant. Again, to be fair, Meehan might not have been aware of that, perhaps having seen Forsyth referenced as a source for the name in later works.

George Lindley did give ‘Norfolk Beaufin’ as the name of the apple in A Guide to the Orchard and Kitchen Garden (1831), but he definitely didn’t follow Forsyth in doing so – although it’s understandable, give the relative publication dates, that Meehan would have assumed he had – and it’s actually far more likely to have been the other way around, as I’ll be discussing in detail in a later chapter.

Finally, Meehan’s assertion that – “one hundred years ago it was written by various person Norfolk Beefing, Lincolnshire Beefing, Yorkshire Beefing, Catshead Beaufin, and Read’s Baker” seems to be a mash-up of lists from both Forsyth and Hogg, and possibly the Chiswick Catalogue as well. But none of these publications were available as early as 1782, so couldn’t possibly match Meehan’s statement that this was the situation “one hundred years ago”.

All in all: Mr. Meehan gained a few points for effort, but lost a great many more through lack of accuracy. And after all that work, it seems that he was still unable to satisfy himself, or most likely anyone else, as to the apple’s correct name and spelling.

Seconds Away, Round Three

By way of an addendum, and to prove that a good argument just doesn’t know when to stop, I found a third, very minor dispute as to the correct derivation of ‘Beaufin’ in the pages of the Eastern Daily Press for Monday 23rd May 1904. Printed in the ‘Eastern Counties Lore and Legend’ column was the following discussion of Norfolk Biffins:

“The most authoritative dictionary states that the biffin is a variety of cooking apple, cultivated especially in Norfolk and that the name is a dialectal pronunciation of “beefing”, in reference to the deep red colour of this fruit … An old inhabitant of Norwich has told me that Norfolk Biffins, baked and flattened in the form of round cakes, are not nearly so good as they used to be; also he spoke of a celebrated biffin tree in the Close, the apples from which were very noted, and greatly in demand from the baker who prepared them.”

This was followed, two days later, by the following letter from a correspondent:

“To the Editor. Sir – “Biffin” is a corruption of the French “beaufin”. In Messrs. Daniels’ catalogue under the heading “select apples” you will find :- “Norfolk beaufin, a well-known, useful, late-keeping sort; excellent for baking.” – Yours truly, Lovewell Blake.”

And then, the day after that:

“To the Editor. Sir – Though Mr. Lovewell Blake writes so magisterially that “biffin” is a corruption of French “beaufin”, he is quite wrong. The use of the latter word by Messrs. Daniels is of no authority whatever, and I am sure that highly respectable firm would not claim expert knowledge in the niceties of etymology. The greatest and best authority, which is, of course, the great Oxford Dictionary, edited by Dr. Murray, settles the fact that “the spelling beaufin has been fabricated to give the colour to a fictitious derivation from F. beau, beautiful, and fin, fine,” also that biffin is “a dialetical pronunciation of beefing, from Beef, in reference to the deep colour of the apple.” These definitions are in the first volume of the New English Dictionary, published in 1886 … Yours faithfully, James Hooper.”

‘Beefing’ (Eventually) Victorious!

As I’ve mentioned, Robert Hogg consistently used the ‘Beefing’ suffix in all his pomological works – from British Pomology, through all five editions of The Fruit Manual, and also The Herefordshire Pomona – whilst ‘Beaufin’, with its theoretical French origin – and therefore an assumption of a French-sounding, “boe-fan” pronunciation¹⁹I’ll be exploring the twin areas of spelling and pronunciation in much more detail in a later chapter. – was relegated to a synonym. As a result of Hogg’s steadily increasing influence, from his publishing debut in 1851 until his death in 1897, the preference for ‘Beefing’ gradually became de facto, and ‘Beaufin’ steadily retreated from prominence.

Eventually, even the custodians of the Chiswick Garden fell into line, although it did take a few years – and quite likely the eventual retirement of Robert Thompson in 1867/8, following his replacement as superintendent by first George Eyles in 1860, who was then followed by A. F. Barron in 1868²⁰At least, this is the timeline of succession as far as I can make out from scanning various Conference reports and articles, but if I’ve made any errors then I’m happy to be corrected. – before the Royal Horticultural Society adopted ‘Beefing’ as the standard name-variant suffix.

The originators of the Chiswick school had remained staunchly pro-‘Beaufin’ ever since the publication of the first edition of the Catalogue of Fruits Cultivated in the Garden of the Horticultural Society of London, at Chiswick was published in 1826, in which ‘Beaufin, Norfolk’ had been accompanied by ‘Beaufinette’, ‘Beaufin, Millmount’, and ‘Beaufin, White’.

The first inclusion of ‘Striped Beaufin’ was in the Chiswick catalogue’s Third Edition, Supplement, a short update to the main third edition that was published in the Journal of the Horticultural Society of London volume eight (1853). The fourth edition of the Chiswick Garden catalogue – which was printed in instalments, in the pages of volumes two to four of the Proceedings of the Royal Horticultural Society (1862-1864) – still listed ‘Norfolk Beaufin’ and ‘Striped Beaufin’²¹It’s tempting to imagine Dr. Hogg fuming at the use of ‘Beaufin’ rather than ‘Beefing’, particularly as it appeared so soon after the publication of the second edition of The Fruit Manual in 1862 – in which both ‘Norfolk’ and ‘Striped’ varieties are once more quite clearly listed as ‘Beefing’ – and especially as he was the secretary of the Royal Horticultural Society’s fruit committee at the time., with ‘Beaufinette’, ‘Suffolk Beaufin’ and ‘White Beaufin’ still included, although all three of the latter were to disappear from the catalogue in the next few decades.

In other sources of the era the suffixes ‘Beefing’ and ‘Beaufin’ were still used pretty much interchangeably – along with the occasional ‘Biffin’, most likely thrown in to the mix as a result of the dried apple sweetmeat’s Dickens-inspired popularity – until the 1880s.

Then, in 1883, the Royal Horticultural Society held its National Apple Congress at the Chiswick Gardens. The subsequent report on the Congress was compiled and edited by the event’s organiser, the “Superintendent of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Garden, Secretary to the Fruit Committee and of the National Apple Congress”²²British Apples (1884) p. 249 Mr. A. F. Barron, and was published the following year in a volume entitled British Apples²³The Google Books edition of British Apples is rather badly scanned and almost illegible in places, but there’s a much better version online at Cornell University Library..

This report included comprehensive lists of all the apples exhibited at the Congress by attendee growers from across the country, and Barron proved to be a devotee of Hogg’s ‘Beefing’ school; the name-variant suffix employed throughout is most definitely ‘Beefing’, with mentions of ‘Norfolk Beefing’, ‘Striped Beefing’, and the newly-introduced ‘Herefordshire Beefing’ as well.

A follow-up Apple and Pear Conference was held in 1888, at which Dr. Hogg – no longer the Secretary of the Royal Horticultural Society, but now a Fellow of the Society instead – was invited to Chair the proceedings. A. F. Barron’s 1884 report was updated with the 1888 exhibition data and re-published in both volume ten of the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society and in a “popular edition” as British Apples Illustrated (1888). Once again, the ‘Beefing’ suffix was applied throughout the publication, thereby stamping the Society’s seal of approval on Hogg’s preferred ‘Beefing’ variant and putting the nail in the coffin of the imposter ‘Beaufin’. And that, with one or two exceptions as I’ve shown in the previous chapter, has remained the situation to the present day.

A Few Notes on the Significance of Synonyms

I think now would be a good moment to take a bit of a tangent, and talk about the reasons why I think all this talk of synonyms, and more specifically the way in which synonyms are decided upon, isn’t a purely theoretical, intellectual exercise. So far, the emphasis has been on the back-and-forth between various pomologists, and that’s all rather interesting, whether it results in a public argument or not. But there are more significant implications of the swapping, changing and re-assigning of synonyms, and I think there are two ‘Beefing’-related examples that illustrate the point rather nicely.

At the R.H.S.’s 1883 National Apple Congress and 1888 National Apple and Pear Conference, three apple varieties were re-identified as synonyms of ‘Norfolk Beefing’, despite two of them having been considered to be distinct and separate varieties for many decades, or even a couple centuries, prior to the two conventions taking place.

Here once more is the list of synonyms for the ‘Beefing’ apples as identified in Barron’s British Apples (1884), the official report on the 1883 National Apple Congress:

— Beaufinette
— Green Beefing = French Crab
— Herefordshire Beefing
— Norfolk Beefing
-s- Norfolk Bearer
-s- Norfolk Coleman
-s- Ramsden
-s- Red Beefing
-s- Winter Beefing
-s- Winter Coleman
— Norfolk Storing
— Striped Beefing
— Yellow Beefing
— Yorkshire Beefing = Winter Majetin

Note that Barron includes ‘Norfolk Bearer’, ‘Norfolk Coleman’ (a.k.a. elsewhere ‘Norfolk Colman’) and ‘Winter Coleman’ (a.k.a. elsewhere ‘Winter Colman’) as synonyms of ‘Norfolk Beefing’ – presumably as a result of comparisons of the exhibited fruits, carried out during the Congress – whereas previously, as per the fourth edition of the Chiswick catalogue, both ‘Norfolk Bearer’ and ‘Winter Colman’ had been considered to be distinct varieties, whilst ‘Norfolk Coleman’ was listed as a synonym of ‘Winter Colman’.

Also note that in British Apples ‘Norfolk Storing’ – admittedly not a ‘Beefing’ per se, but bear with me for a moment – is listed as a variety in its own right, whereas in the fourth edition Chiswick catalogue it was given as a synonym of ‘Winter Colman’. There’s also a second entry in British Apples which reads: “Norfolk Storing, see Golden Ball”. And in the follow-up British Apples Illustrated, which added information from the 1888 Conference to the lists from the 1883 Congress, ‘Norfolk Storing’, is still considered to be a distinct variety, with two entries, the second of which is given the synonyms ‘Golden Ball’ – which doesn’t sound very ‘Beefing’-like at all – and ‘Dolphine’.

However, in the fifth edition of Dr. Robert Hogg’s The Fruit Manual, which was also published in 1884, we find the following:

— Herefordshire Beefing
— Norfolk Bearer
— Norfolk Beefing
-s- Norfolk Beaufing (typo?)
-s- Norfolk Beau-fin
-s- Norfolk Beefin
-s- Catshead Beaufin
-s- Reed’s Baker (+ sp. change)
-s- Taliesin
— Striped Beefing
-s- Striped Beaufin
— Winter Colman
-s- Black Jack (+)
-s- Norfolk Colman
-s- Norfolk Storing

Here, Hogg is saying that both ‘Norfolk Colman’ and ‘Norfolk Storing’ are actually synonyms of ‘Winter Colman’, but that ‘Winter Colman’ is not a synonym of ‘Norfolk Beefing’ after all – and therefore ‘Norfolk Col(e)man’ can’t be a synonym of ‘Norfolk Beefing’ – and neither is ‘Norfolk Bearer’.

Referring back, we can see that Hogg has consistently been listing the same varieties and synonyms since the first edition of The Fruit Manual in 1861, demonstrating that it must be Barron’s British Apples that is ringing the changes. In fact, British Apples is the first publication I’ve seen in which ‘Winter Colman’ was considered to be any kind of synonym, rather than a variety in its own right.

Both writers can’t be a hundred percent correct, and at this far a remove it is of course impossible to say which one of them was definitely in the right. Which, on the face of it, perhaps doesn’t seem to be too much of a problem – after all, it’s just a difference of opinion about apple variety names – until, that is, we consider the knock-on effects of this particular re-classification.

For starters, the confusion introduced in 1884 was very much still in evidence nearly a century later. In Muriel W. G. Smith’s National Apple Register of the United Kingdom (1971) – essentially a compilation of as many earlier sources as Smith could access, including those by Barron and Hogg – Smith listed all four of the above varieties: ‘Norfolk Bearer’, ‘Norfolk Storing’, ‘Norfolk Coleman’ and ‘Winter Coleman’, plus ‘Winter Colman’, as synonyms of ‘Norfolk Beefing’²⁴Smith’s list is essentially a mash-up of both Hogg and Barron’s lists, which suggests an assumption that both writers were originally correct, even though the two sources contradict each other..

However, there’s a separate entry in the Register for ‘Winter Colman’, with listed synonyms ‘Norfolk Bearer’, ‘Norfolk Storing’, ‘Norfolk Colman’, ‘Norfolk Coleman’ and ‘Norfolk Colman’s Bearer’ – via The Herefordshire Pomona – for good measure. And then there’s a further note that ‘Winter Colman’ is “confused with Norfolk Beefing”.

Confused? You don’t say…

Let’s move on to the current National Fruit Collection database which, as well as details of the Collection, also incorporates the contents of Smith’s National Register. The database has two entries for ‘Winter Colman’, one of which repeats Smith’s “confused with Norfolk Beefing” synopsis, and another that reads “preferred name is Norfolk Beefing”. In other words, ‘Winter Colman’ is now considered by the UK’s major pomological authority to be a synonym of ‘Norfolk Beefing’, as per Barron’s re-classification in British Apples. And because that is the National Fruit Collection’s preference, ‘Winter Colman = ‘Norfolk Beefing’ is now a canonical synonym association as far as everyone else is concerned.

Say Goodbye to ‘Winter Colman’

The tangible significance of this re-association of ‘Winter Colman’ with ‘Norfolk Beefing’ is this: the National Fruit Collection no longer contains a ‘Winter Colman’ tree. Whereas, as you can see from the excerpt below, the collection did include ‘Winter Colman’ when the fourth edition of the Chiswick Catalogue was published, back in 1864.

I don’t know exactly when in the past 160 years the ‘Winter Colman’ tree disappeared from the National Fruit Collection; whether it was deliberately removed after the 1883 Congress, or whether when the tree that was growing in 1864 eventually succumbed to disease or senescence, a decision was taken not to replace it, on the grounds that it was actually ‘Norfolk Beefing’, and there was a tree of that variety in the collection already.

I do know it wasn’t a de-accession decision made in the wake of the genetic testing programme that the current custodians of the Collection carried out a decade or so ago, because I’ve been able to download the results of the fingerprinting project. ‘Winter Colman’ wasn’t listed as a tested variety, and neither was it mentioned in a subsequent list of de-accessed varieties²⁵‘The Long Term Housing, Maintenance and Scientific Curation of the National Fruit Collections’, Defra Project code GC0147, Annual Report 2018/19, Appendix 2. So presumably the disappearance must have occurred much earlier.

But what if Hogg was right, and Barron was mistaken? What if ‘Winter Colman’ actually was, as had always previously been assumed, a genuinely separate variety to ‘Norfolk Beefing’?

Barron, or another pomologist at the Congress, acting with the noblest of intentions, could have recorded ‘Winter Colman’ as being close enough in appearance to ‘Norfolk Beefing’ to potentially be considered the same variety – perhaps one was a parent, close sibling, or even a sport of the other – but merely as a discussion point. Barron himself took pains to point out that British Apples wasn’t intended to be canonical when he said, in the introduction:

“The Descriptive Catalogue of the Apples exhibited at the Congress can only be accepted as such, and is not to be regarded as furnishing a correct or authoritative nomenclature. Some names are given with a knowledge of their doubtful character. Many errors there may be, also, which are purely accidental, through the misplacement of the proper labels, mis-spelling, &c. of the proper names, and various other causes.”

However, once the association was printed in British Apples it quickly became canonical. And quite possibly as a direct result, ‘Winter Colman’ was subsequently deemed surplus to requirements.

And yet, if the equation of ‘Winter Colman’ with ‘Norfolk Beefing’ was an accidental error, then a fine old apple variety – Hogg himself described ‘Winter Colman’ as a “culinary apple of first-rate quality” and said the tree was a “very strong and vigorous grower” – may have been lost to us forever, on no more solid a basis than an expressed opinion.

The Tale of Taliesin

Something similar may have happened in the case of an apple named ‘Taliesin’ – a.k.a. ‘Tallesin’ and possibly ‘Taliesman’ as well – which is listed in various publications as a synonym of ‘Norfolk Beefing’. This time Robert Hogg seems to be the instigator of the synonym association, as he was the first pomologist to mention it, from the second edition of The Fruit Manual in 1862 through to the fifth in 1884, and in The Herefordshire Pomona as well.

However, I did find an article headed ‘British Pomological Society’ in The Florist, Fruitist, and Garden Miscellany magazine, volume 11 (1858) which describes the first public appearance of ‘Taliesin’:

“MAY 6, Mr Hogg in the chair. This was the day appointed for competing for the prize of one pound, offered by Mr Spencer of Bowood, for the best Seedling Kitchen Apple, if the variety exhibited should be considered by the meeting worthy of such distinction. Dr. Davies of Pershore sent a fine large Apple, which he stated was a seedling and named by him Taliesin. It is above the medium size, and almost entirely covered with dark red, except in patches, where it had been shaded, and there it is greenish yellow. It bears a very close resemblance to the Norfolk Beaufin ; its flesh is yellowish, firm, crisp, and very juicy, with that fine, brisk, and grateful acidity that characterises the last named Apple. It was at first thought to be identical with that variety, but on comparison with it the flavour was thought to be more acid. As regards the origin of this Apple, Dr Davies said: “I believe the parent to be the Beaufin, although not a common Apple here (Pershore). The kernel was planted nearly forty years since” … This and [another apple] were considered the best two varieties exhibited ; both were equal in merit, but Taliesin being considerably larger in size … it was considered the best adapted for cultivation. It remains however to be decided how the prize will be awarded.”

Dr. Davies stated that ‘Taliesin’ was a seedling variety from a kernel (a pip) possibly taken from a ‘Beaufin’ apple and planted c.1820, and he was confident enough to enter it into a contest to find the best seedling kitchen apple at a meeting chaired by the British Pomological Society’s own Robert Hogg. And whilst we’re told that at first it was thought that Davies’ ‘Taliesin’ apple was actually a ‘Norfolk Beaufin’, the meeting concluded that it was different enough in flavour for the initial impression to have been mistaken.

Between the meeting in May 1858 and the publication of The Fruit Manual 2nd edition in 1862, Hogg must have changed his mind and fallen back on the initial impression that Taliesin was “identical” to ‘Norfolk Beaufin’ – although surely that should have been ‘Norfolk Beefing’ if Hogg was in the Chair – and that a slight difference in acidity wasn’t enough to declare it a distinct variety. Which seems logical enough, as different individual apples will indeed possess and display different levels of acidity, depending on what the growing conditions were that year, what time of year the apple was picked and how it might have been. And flavour is subjective, so one man’s impression of acid might be another man’s slightly under-sweet.

But it is also possible that this time Hogg was mistaken, Dr. Davies was correct, and ‘Taliesin’ was indeed a seedling. If so, it would indeed have been distinct variety, even if it was a very similar one to its potential ‘Norfolk Beaufin / Beefing’ parent. This very opinion was put forward by a correspondent who signed themselves ‘A.P.’ in a letter to the Field, or the County Gentleman’s Magazine for May 16th 1885, headed ‘Apples for Experiment’:

“The Norfolk Beefing is the type of a whole race of apples which seem to reproduce themselves very nearly, if not entirely, by seed. Mr. Rivers sent out some years ago what he called Taliesin, as an improvement on, and what he afterwards said was identical with, “the Norfolk Beefing”. Taliesin is neither one nor the other. It is a bigger fruit, and grows somewhat different in form and in tree ; but it had not so much juice as the old sort, nor is it so neat in form. Still, Taliesin should do as a parent from which to raise some valuable seedlings, although I should prefer experimenting with the real kind.”

So perhaps it was Hogg’s good friend Rivers who made the ‘Norfolk Beefing’ = ‘Taliesin’ connection and Hogg just reported it in his books. Whoever put the idea forward, once again a potentially useful kitchen apple may have been thrown aside on the mistaken assumption that it already existed under another name, and therefore never achieved wider cultivation. We can only hope that Dr. Davies was at least awarded his one pound prize money.

Summing Up Synonym Significance

All of the above serves to illustrate two key points about the practical implications and importance of these seemingly innocuous, even trivial, synonym alterations.

Firstly: that the opinion of a single pomologist – or two pomologists, or a panel of pomologists at the National Apple Congress – can have future ramifications in terms of the longevity and modern-day availability (or otherwise) of an apple variety. And whilst the theoretical loss of an apple variety or two perhaps isn’t so great a tragedy – after all, so many hundreds more have fallen by the wayside over the centuries – every lost apple variety does represent an impoverishment of the modern-day apple gene-pool.

Secondly, and of more relevance to my attempt to track down the original names of the ‘Beefing’ apples: it serves as a warning to your humble researcher to be aware that not every piece of information in every source – even the most comprehensive and authoritative source in the country – can or should be considered to be absolutely one hundred per cent reliably accurate.

The further back I venture into the archives of pomology then, more often than not, any changes to synonym lists that I find will be the expression of a single pomologist’s personal opinion, rather than the outcome of careful scientific study, and this is something I need to bear in mind.

There are always going to be shades of nuance and context to take into consideration when attempting to track down, as I currently am, the “correct” name, or point of origin, of one or more apple varieties via the available sources, and I need to be wary of making my own assumptions and drawing conclusions on the basis of unreliable source material.

Dr. Hogg’s Further ‘Beefing’ Adventures

As well as taking “Pyrus” to task over the correct naming of ‘Norfolk Beefing’, Dr. Hogg turned out to be a key player in the stories of both ‘Striped Beefing’ and ‘Herefordshire Beefing’, and I’ll be exploring those episodes in parts three and four of this chapter. For now, here’s a brief precis of each:

Dr. Hogg and ‘Striped Beefing’

From around 1847 or so, Dr. Hogg was an avowed champion of ‘Striped Beefing’, which at the time was apparently little-known, or at least, rather under-appreciated. In British Pomology (1851) he declared the variety to be:

“… beautiful and handsome … One of the handsomest and best culinary apples in cultivation; for baking it is unrivalled.”

This was a sentiment that Hogg repeated in the first through to the fifth edition of The Fruit Manual (1861 – 1884), alongside something of a mission statement; he clearly wanted to spread the word about ‘Striped Beefing’ to as wide a fruit-tree-buying audience as he possibly could:

“Through the kindness of George Jefferies, Esq., of Marlborough Terrace, Kensington, who procured it from his residence in Norfolk, I had the good fortune, in 1847, to obtain grafts, which, when propagated, I distributed through several of the principal nurseries of the country.”

The story of how Dr. Hogg “rediscovered” and subsequently worked to promote ‘Striped Beefing’ will be told in part three of this chapter (a link will be added here once I’ve finished editing it and have posted it to the site): Dr. Hogg and ‘Striped Beefing’.

Dr. Hogg and ‘Herefordshire Beefing’

Dr. Hogg was also instrumental in the discovery, commercial introduction and subsequent popularisation of ‘Herefordshire Beefing’, through his involvement, alongside Dr. Henry Graves Bull, in the production of The Herefordshire Pomona (1776-85), and the publication in 1884 of the fifth and final edition of his personal magnum opus, The Fruit Manual, in which he once again provided a glowing reference:

“This is a very fine and very heavy apple for its size ; excellent for kitchen use, and lasting till January.”

The Fruit Manual 5th edition also provided an origin-story for ‘Herefordshire Beefing’, or rather, Hogg’s version of an origin-story; one that differed in a few slight but potentially interesting details to the one that was previously told by Dr. Bull in The Herefordshire Pomona.

The story of the introduction of this new ‘Beefing’ variety – along with my own speculation as to the potential reasons why Drs. Hogg and Bull were quite so keen to promote it, and why the two of them didn’t quite get their origin stories straight – will be told in part four of this chapter (again, a link will be added here once I’ve finished editing it and have posted it to the site): Dr. Hogg, Dr. Bull and the Origins of ‘Herefordshire Beefing’.

‘Beefing Apples’, Chapter Two: Summary

If you’d rather not wait for the last two parts of this chapter to be published, the key points of each are summarised below. But if you would prefer to read the detailed version first, please skip the following summary, in which case you can consider this chapter finished and done with and can click here to return to the main Table of Contents and explore the rest of the series.

The second half of the nineteenth century was a golden age for British pomology, and one of the greatest pomologists of the era was Dr. Robert Hogg, who was closely involved in the stories of all three of the surviving ‘Beefing’ group of apples.

Dr. Hogg was largely responsible for ‘Beefing’ becoming the de facto name-variant suffix, as opposed to the earlier preference for ‘Beaufin’, although some authorities, including the Chiswick Garden of the Horticultural Society of London – which became the Royal Horticultural Society in 1861 – may have continued to use ‘Beaufin’ until after the National Apple Congress of 1883.

Dr. Hogg was so insistent on the correctness of ‘Beefing’ that he got into a public bout of literary fisticuffs in 1853, via the letters page of a horticultural journal of the day. His opponent was a pseudonymous antagonist who went by the non-de-plume of “Pyrus”. Details of nomenclature were disputed, petty insults exchanged, and aspersions cast, until finally the bout was brought to a premature end – via a rather unsportsmanlike editorial intervention – to result in a frustratingly unresolved stalemate.

Around the same time, Dr. Hogg was involved in the re-popularisation of an almost-lost ‘Beefing’ variety. ‘Striped Beefing’ was, according to Hogg, introduced by George Lindley in the late eighteenth century and, as I’ll explore in later chapters, was recommended by Lindley in A Guide to the Orchard and Kitchen Garden (1831), albeit under the name ‘Striped Beaufin’.

Hogg took it upon himself to re-introduce this fine culinary variety and to that end obtained scions, or “grafts” from the ‘Striped Beefing’ tree in the Norfolk orchard of one George Jefferies esquire. He then propagated new ‘Striped Beefing’ trees and saw to it that they were “distributed through several of the principal nurseries of the country”²⁶Robert Hogg, British Pomology (1851), p. 189, one of which was that of Hogg’s very good friend and colleague Thomas Rivers.

Hogg’s promotional push seems to have met with some success, as ‘Striped Beaufin’ was subsequently mentioned and recommended in a number of pomology texts and gardening guides. Eventually it seems to have become the ‘Beefing’ apple of choice, rising in popularity to gain an equal footing with and even surpassing ‘Norfolk Beefing’, if records of exhibitions at various apple shows towards the end of the nineteenth century are anything to go by.

Dr. Hogg was even more closely involved with the discovery – or possibly the re-discovery? – and introduction of ‘Herefordshire Beefing’. Hogg was said to have first encountered the apple at an 1876 meeting of the Woolhope Naturalists Club to which he had been invited by Rev. C. H. Bulmer, and he was subsequently credited with re-naming the variety from plain ‘Beefing’ to ‘Herefordshire Beefing’, apparently in order to distinguish it from ‘Norfolk Beefing’.

One or both of these gentlemen either discovered or described an origin story for ‘Herefordshire Beefing’; a story that involved the renowned early nineteenth century pomologist William Forsyth (snr.) and centred on a mysterious communication to Forsyth from a “Mr. Stroud, of Dorsetshire”, dating to either 1799 (Hogg) or 1801 (Bull), in which a ‘Herefordshire Beefing’ (Hogg) or ‘Hereford Beefin’ (Bull) apple was allegedly mentioned. Alas, no trace of the original communication has emerged from the archives, and so we only have Hogg and/or Bull’s word to go on.

Following its introduction ‘Herefordshire Beefing’ enjoyed a quite rapid rise in popularity, at least in its home county, which was surely aided by glowing reviews of the variety when it was exhibited at the National Apple Congress of 1883. The apple was then promoted far and wide, both via the medium of the Herefordshire Pomona (1876-85) and the fifth edition of Hogg’s The Fruit Manual (1884), and with the commercial involvement, as advertisements of the time show, of the Cranston’s Nursery Company of Hereford, and seemingly no-one else, at least for the first few years.

Exactly how much of the push behind this “new” variety was down to Hogg, and how much was driven by the general editor of the Herefordshire Pomona, Dr. Henry Graves Bull, is a matter of conjecture. A few years later, according to one writer, Hereford had become “famous” for the potentially quite lucrative production of biffins – the dried, pressed, apple sweetmeat – that was recommended to be made from just a few apple varieties; ‘Norfolk Beefing’ was chief amongst them, and another was the “New Herefordshire Beefing”, courtesy of Cranston’s.

I do wonder whether it was Dr. Bull – with the assistance of Dr. Hogg – or perhaps his good friend, the Rev. C. H. Bulmer, who may have been the original grower of the apple, which Cranston’s then adopted and introduced to the trade? Or was one or both of them acting on behalf of Cranston’s to re-name and then popularise an earlier “Cranstoun’s Seedling” variety? And did any, or all of these gentlemen, benefit financially from the variety’s success? Particularly if it became grown to such an extent that the preservation of its fruit into biffins eventually made Herefordshire “famous” for them?²⁷I haven’t been able to definitely answer any of these questions, so they remain speculation on my part, but I have enjoyed unpicking the threads of the story and then extrapolating them towards possible scenarios and outcomes.

Meanwhile, the question of whether ‘Beefing’ or ‘Beaufin’ was the correct name-variant suffix continued to rumble along – surfacing again in an American horticultural journal in 1882 – until, in the wake of the National Apple Congress of 1883 and the Apple and Pear Conference of 1888, even the R.H.S. fell into line with Hogg’s school of thought, and ‘Beefing’ became the standard version of the name-variant. And so it remains to the current day.

Something else of note happened at the 1883 National Apple Congress, when an apple variety called ‘Winter Colman’ was decided to be a synonym of ‘Norfolk Beefing’, presumably due to the similar appearance of the exhibited apples. This detail was published in A. F. Barron’s report on the Congress, British Apples (1884), subsequently became canonical, and potentially led to the removal or loss of the ‘Winter Colman’ tree from the R.H.S.’s Chiswick Garden, and therefore from the National Fruit Collection in years to come.

However, Dr. Hogg disagreed with Barron, continuing to list ‘Winter Colman’ as a distinct variety in the fifth edition of The Fruit Manual (1884), as he consistently had done since the first edition in 1860. Depending on who was right, it’s possible that a fine old cooking apple variety has been lost to growers, and to the wider gene pool, because one pomologist, or maybe a Congress fruit committee, decided it was no longer distinct.

This serves as both a warning to the researcher to be careful when drawing conclusions about which apple varieties equate to which others, and an illustration of the point that, when dealing with historical pomology texts that decide or reassign synonyms between varieties, nothing should be considered to be absolutely accurate and factual. Alterations in nomenclature are far more often an expression of personal opinion than the result of scientific research, and the waters just become muddier and muddier the further back in the records we venture.

The 1880s-1890s may well have been the pinnacle years for the three ‘Beefing’ apples, because another new introduction at the 1883 National Apple Congress quickly went on to eclipse the ‘Beefing’ apples and pretty much all other cooking apples, whatever their pedigree or the strength of the esteem in which they were once held. The apple in question was, of course, ‘Bramley’s Seedling’ – nowadays usually plain ‘Bramley’ for short – and it remains just about the only cooking apple still available in the UK outside of farmer’s markets, orchard-gate shops, or specialist greengrocers.

For a while though, during pomology’s golden age, all three ‘Beefing’ apples were held in very high esteem indeed amongst apple connoisseurs and orchard enthusiasts alike, and despite their inevitable decline, they did survive as viable varieties into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as I’ve already discussed in the previous chapter.

In the Next Chapter

I’ll be discussing the various name-variants that were used for the ‘Beefing’ group of apples in the first half of the nineteenth century, and explaining how and why ‘Beaufin’ became the preferred variant amongst the majority – but by no means all – of the pomologists, orchardists and horticultural authors of the era.

I’ll also introduce the two Lindleys – the little-known Norfolk nurseryman George, and his much more famous son John – as well as William Forsyth, and sundry other pomological authors of the era, and tell the tales of their involvement in the ‘Beefing’ apples story.

˃˃A link to the next chapter: The ‘Beefing’ Apples Story, 1800 – 1849 will be added here once it goes live.

˃˃ Click here to return to the main Table of Contents and explore the rest of the series.

Footnotes

• 1
  When the price of staples like wheat and corn was low – usually due to greater availability of cheap overseas imports – farmers often turned to their orchards as a means of sustaining their income. ↩︎
• 2
  1850 is the date that marks the start of what Gerry Barnes and Tom Williamson, in English Orchards (2022), call “the orchard century”; a period of intense planting and growth of orchards in England that coincided with and was driven by the development of industrialised methods of fruit distribution and processing. ↩︎
• 3
  ‘Dessert’ was originally a final course of fresh or preserved fruits and nuts, often served at the very end of the meal, after the pudding course. As the hosts of dinner parties – mostly the landed gentry and nobility – sought to out-do each other with the impressive range of fresh fruits they could offer their guests, there was a corresponding interest in raising varied varieties of apples, pears, peaches, plums and more exotic fruits in the estate’s own orchards and fruit houses. ↩︎
• 4
  By way of an example: at time of writing there are two first edition copies of Hugh and Elizabeth Ronalds’ Pyrus Malus Brentfordiensis (1831) for sale via abebooks that are offered for upwards of $4,000 (approx. £3,000) apiece. And a bound, two-volume first edition of The Herefordshire Pomona (1876 – 1885) recently went under the auctioneer’s hammer in the UK, at an estimated sale price of £3,000 – £4,000 (although I’m not sure if it sold or what the final sale price was… it all depends on the meaning of “hammer price passed” on the-saleroom.com.). ↩︎
• 5
  Non-English language sources will be examined in a later chapter. ↩︎
• 6
  Perhaps he sampled a dried apple sweetmeat or two between editions and became an instant convert to the School of ‘Biffin’? ↩︎
• 7
  There will be more on this subject in a later chapter on the potential etymology of the term ‘Beefing’. ↩︎
• 8
  For a more detailed biography of Dr. Hogg, see The Book of Apples by Joan Morgan and Alison Richards (2011) pp. 109 – 112, and ‘The 150th anniversary of the publication of Robert Hogg’s Fruit Manual’ in volume four of the Occasional Papers From the RHS Lindley Library series (Oct 2010). ↩︎
• 9
  Brent Elliott, in his piece on Hogg in Occasional Papers From the Lindley Library no. 4, gives the earlier date for the end of Hogg’s involvement in the Brompton Park nursery business; Joan Morgan and Alison Richards, in The New Book of Apples suggest that he was at the nursery until it closed in 1854; and an obituary for Hogg in The Garden magazine for March 20th 1897 states that “the business of Gray Adams and Hogg continued till the dissolution of the concern in 1851”. ↩︎
• 10
  This volume was the first of a planned, but uncompleted, series on the fruits of the British Isles; vol 2 – Pears was meant to follow but never saw the light of day. ↩︎
• 11
  A very close copy of British Pomology, suspected to be an attempt by his publisher to shift remaining stock before The Fruit Manual was published. ↩︎
• 12
  The Horticultural Society of London formed their own Fruit Committee in 1858 and the Pomological Society of London in due course became the R.H.S. Fruit Committee. ↩︎
• 13
  Robert Hogg, British Pomology vol 1 (1851) p. 147 ↩︎
• 14
  I think I read somewhere that it might have been a simple re-titling by Hogg’s publisher in an attempt to shift stock of the old work before the first edition of Hogg’s The Fruit Manual was published in 1860 ↩︎
• 15
  Although I do have my own suspicions as to they might have been, which I shall reveal at the end of chapter two part two… ↩︎
• 16
  I’ve scoured the French sources that I have access to, and searched several online archives, but I have found no trace of such an apple, although I suspect that would still be claimed as a scored point by “Pyrus”, perhaps demonstrating his argument that many such apples would have gone unrecorded by the rustic growers of Normandy. ↩︎
• 17
  It certainly wasn’t resolved to mine… ↩︎
• 18
  A date “nearly sixty years ago” would be the mid 1820s, which was probably the heyday of Norwich bakers’ biffin production, when boxes of them were indeed sent around the country as Christmas gifts, as I talked about in the Norfolk Biffin Story. ↩︎
• 19
  I’ll be exploring the twin areas of spelling and pronunciation in much more detail in a later chapter. ↩︎
• 20
  At least, this is the timeline of succession as far as I can make out from scanning various Conference reports and articles, but if I’ve made any errors then I’m happy to be corrected. ↩︎
• 21
  It’s tempting to imagine Dr. Hogg fuming at the use of ‘Beaufin’ rather than ‘Beefing’, particularly as it appeared so soon after the publication of the second edition of The Fruit Manual in 1862 – in which both ‘Norfolk’ and ‘Striped’ varieties are once more quite clearly listed as ‘Beefing’ – and especially as he was the secretary of the Royal Horticultural Society’s fruit committee at the time. ↩︎
• 22
  British Apples (1884) p. 249 ↩︎
• 23
  The Google Books edition of British Apples is rather badly scanned and almost illegible in places, but there’s a much better version online at Cornell University Library. ↩︎
• 24
  Smith’s list is essentially a mash-up of both Hogg and Barron’s lists, which suggests an assumption that both writers were originally correct, even though the two sources contradict each other. ↩︎
• 25
  ‘The Long Term Housing, Maintenance and Scientific Curation of the National Fruit Collections’, Defra Project code GC0147, Annual Report 2018/19, Appendix 2 ↩︎
• 26
  Robert Hogg, British Pomology (1851), p. 189 ↩︎
• 27
  I haven’t been able to definitely answer any of these questions, so they remain speculation on my part, but I have enjoyed unpicking the threads of the story and then extrapolating them towards possible scenarios and outcomes. ↩︎