From the Living Museum
Fameuse
- Origin
- Quebec / Montreal region of Canada, early 18th century or earlier (also known as Snow Apple)
- Era
- Early 18th c. or earlier
- Type / use
- Dessert · Fresh eating
History & Stories
Bright red fruit with tender, fine-grained, very juicy white flesh and a mild, sweet, aromatic flavor sometimes showing strawberry notes. Unique as the probable parent of McIntosh (the National Fruit Collection gives McIntosh's parentage as Fameuse or Saint Lawrence × unknown 3) and as a classic ‘snow’ apple whose white flesh and delicate perfume were highly prized in earlier centuries. Poor keeper; best eaten fresh.
Folklore & Name
Canadian (Quebec/Montreal area) variety also known as Snow Apple. Probable parent of McIntosh 3. The white flesh and delicate perfume made it a classic ‘snow’ apple of earlier centuries.
Digging into the History
Below my own notes, here is what the old fruit books and today’s collections record about this apple, kept apart from the stories people tell.
What we know
Fameuse, also called the Snow Apple for its white flesh, is one of the oldest apples of French Canada. The UK National Fruit Collection says it is "thought to be a Canadian variety and may have been raised from seed brought from France by early settlers," and that it was planted in the United States in about 1730 1. S.A. Beach's The Apples of New York (1905) quotes the Vermont pomologist Waugh: "The history of Fameuse is obscure, probably beyond clearing up satisfactorily" 2.
The National Fruit Collection lists McIntosh's parentage as "Fameuse or Saint Lawrence x Unknown" 3, so Fameuse may be McIntosh's mother. Its synonyms include Pomme de Neige and Chimney Apple 1.
The competing accounts
- UK National Fruit Collection 1: probably Canadian, possibly grown from French seed carried over by colonists; planted in the United States about 1730.
- Chauncey Goodrich's 1851 letter, reprinted by S.A. Beach 2: French settlers planted it at Chimney Point on Lake Champlain about 120 years earlier and carried it west; he believed it came from France.
- F.A. Waugh, quoted by Beach 2: its history is obscure and probably beyond solving.
Most likely (our judgment, not a certainty): an apple of French Canada, grown in the St Lawrence–Champlain country by the early 1700s. All three sources point to French settlers. Whether the variety itself was brought from France or grew from French seed in Canada cannot be settled.
What we think: stories & traditions
The French trail (tradition). Beach reprints an 1851 letter by Chauncey Goodrich of Burlington, Vermont. He wrote that "one hundred and twenty years since, the French planted this variety on the eastern shore of Lake Champlain" at Chimney Point, where it became the "Chimney apple," and that French settlers carried it to Ogdensburg, Detroit, and Kaskaskia in Illinois, where it was "still known as the 'Snow Apple'" 2. Goodrich believed it came from France itself. Waugh treated this as interesting evidence, not proof 2.
It is a romantic picture: soldiers and settlers carrying the same apple along the lakes and rivers of New France. If the story is right, Fameuse is a living trace of the old French empire in North America.
Sources
- UK National Fruit Collection, "Fameuse." www.nationalfruitcollection.org.uk/full2.php?id=1969&fruit=apple
- S.A. Beach, The Apples of New York, Vol. 2 (Albany: J.B. Lyon, 1905), "Fameuse," pp. 65–67 (quoting Waugh and Goodrich). archive.org/details/applesofnewyork02beacrich/page/65
- UK National Fruit Collection, "McIntosh." www.nationalfruitcollection.org.uk/full2.php?id=3874&fruit=apple
Curious about Fameuse?
Email us at drgoss@honeytreeorchard.com.