A medium-sized, round English dessert apple, excellent for cooking. It is dull-flavoured if picked too early, but otherwise richly aromatic, with lovely russeted skin and crisp, juicy, creamy, sweet yellow flesh when ripe. This is one of the great eating apples. It was grown by Richard Cox, a retired brewer and besotted gardener, who grew the first tree from the pip of a Ribston Pippin in 1826. The new apple would never have been known outside Slough without the help of Joseph Paxton, the Duke of Devonshire's gardener, who became first president of the British Pomological Society, and sent Cox graft-wood all over the country. It was awarded the Royal Horticultural Society First Class Certificate in 1962. It is a late-season apple variety, harvested late-September to early-October in South-East England, is stored and is at its best from mid-October to January. This apple grows everywhere, and with more success than it does in England where it has little disease resistance.
