9. SACK APPLE. [Syn: Spice Apple: Fox's Kernel.] This Apple is one of our oldest historic varieties. Description.—Fruit, below medium size ; conical, and uneven in its outline, being ribbed on the sides in the way of the Margil, and ridged round the eye. Skin, smooth and shining, as if varnished, almost entirely covered with deep bright crimson, which is streaked and mottled with darker crimson on the side next the sun ; but where shaded, it is yellowish and mottled with crimson. Eye, small and closed, with erect pointed segments, set in a deep and plaited basin ; tube, funnel-shaped : stamens, median; the style very stout and thick at the base, filling nearly the half of the tube. Stalk, very short, thick, and fleshy, set in a very shallow cavity. Flesh, tender, crisp, fine-grained, sweet, and with a pleasant subacid flavour. Cells of the core, open ; cell-walls, ovate. In use during October and November. The chemical analysis of this Apple, season 1878, by Mr. G. H. With, F.R.A.S., gives the following results:— Density of fresh juice ... ... 1·036 Ditto after 24 hours' exposure to air 1·044 100 parts of juice by weight contained : Sugar 6·400 Tannin, Mucilage, Salts, &c. 5·220 Water 88·380 The Sack Apple is more used in the present day as a dessert or pot fruit, than for cider. It is an early apple, but keeps fairly well. It has a pleasant vinous aromatic flavour.

— Woolhope Naturalists Field Club, The Herefordshire Pomona (1885)