Peck Pleasant

Sweet Tart
Description

Peck Pleasant, or Peck, is a green, medium-sized apple with a pink blush. Its flesh is juicy and crisp, and it has a lightly tart flavor, with hints of mango. Its trees are susceptible to disease and often bear small crops.

Still, Peck Pleasant was once “one of the most salable apples in the market of Providence,” wrote William Kenrick in 1833, and received high praise nearly a century later from another apple historian, Ulysses P. Hedrick, in 1922: “The many spreading, lichen-covered ancients of this old sort to be found in the dooryards and farm orchards of New York and New England are testimonials to the esteem in which lovers of fruit hold it.”

Discovered: Early 1800s, Rhode Island

Parentage: Unknown

Harvest: None

History

Peck Pleasant originated in Rhode Island in the early 1800s, and for some years it was widely grown in northern Connecticut.