Violette:
Synonyms.—Grosse Pomme Noire d'Amerique, Cal. Traite. iii. 44. Violette
de Quatres Gouts, Cours. Comp. cVAgric. xii. 220. Violet Apple, West. Bot.
iv. 39. Red Calville, of some, ace. Hort. Soc. Cat. but erroneously. Black
Apple, ace. Ron. Pyr. Mai.
Fruit, above medium size ; roundish-ovate, or conical, even and regularly formed. Skin, smooth and shining, covered with a fine violetcolored bloom, and yellow, striped with red, on the shaded side ; but of a dark red, approaching to black, on the side exposed to the sun. Eye, closed, set in a rather deep and plaited basin. Stalk, three quarters of an inch long, stout, and inserted in a deep cavity. Flesh, yellowishwhite, tinged with red under the skin, which is filled with red juice, leaving a stain on the knife with which it is cut ; firm, juicy, and sugary, with a vinous and pleasant flavor.
A culinary apple of good, but not first-rate quality ; in use from October to March (northern hemisphere).
Duhamel, and following him, almost all the French writers on pomology, attribute the name of this apple to the perfume of violets being found in the flavor of the fruit ; a peculiarity I could never detect.
It is more probable it originated from the fruit being covered with a beautiful blue violet bloom, a characteristic which was observed by Rivinius and Moulin, a hundred and fifty years ago.
Robert Hogg, British Pomology
