This section is from the book "The Fruit Manual: Containing The Descriptions And Synonyms Of The Fruits And Fruit Trees Of Great Britain", by Robert Hogg. Also available from Amazon: The Fruit Manual.
Fruit, medium sized, two inches and a half wide, and two inches high : roundish oblate, evenly and regularly formed. Skin, thick and membranous, of a fine pale yellow colour, and thickly strewed with brown dots; very frequently cracked, forming large and deep clefts on the fruit. Eye, scarcely at all depressed, closed, with broad, leafy, convergent segments, some of which are reflexed. Stamens, marginal or median; tube, funnel-shaped. Stalk, short and thick, inserted in a very shallow cavity. Flesh, yellowish, firm, crisp, and juicy, rich and sweet, with a highly aromatic flavour, which is peculiar to this apple only. Cells, round; axile.
A dessert apple of the highest excellence; ripe in the end of August, and continues during September, but does not last long. Nicol says, "This is an excellent apple; as to flavour it is outdone by none but the Nonpareil, over which it has this advantage, that it will ripen in a worse climate and a worse aspect." The tree is a free grower, of an upright habit, and an excellent bearer, but it is subject to canker as it grows old. The branches are generally covered with a number of knobs or burrs; and when planted in the ground these burrs throw out numerous fibres which take root and produce a perfect tree.
This is a very old Scotch apple, supposed to have originated at Arbroath; or to have been introduced from France by the monks of the abbey which formerly existed at that place. The latter opinion is, in all probability, the correct one, although the name, or any of the synonymes quoted above, are not now to be met with in any modern French lists. But in the "Jardinier Francois," which was published in 1651, I find an apple mentioned under the name of Orgeran, which is so similar in pronunciation to Orgeline, I think it not unlikely it may be the same name with a change of orthography, especially as our ancestors were not overparticular in preserving unaltered the names of foreign introductions.
Fruit, rather below medium size, two inches and a half wide, and two inches and a quarter high; roundish, flattened at the base and apex. Skin, yellowish green, strewed with thin russet and russety dots on the shaded side, but washed with thin red, and strewed with russety specks on the side next the sun. Eye, large and open, with short stunted segments, set in a wide and shallow basin. Stalk, half an inch long, inserted in a wide and rather shallow cavity, which is lined with thin russet. Flesh, greenish yellow, firm, crisp, rich, juicy, and sweet, with a brisk and aromatic flavour, somewhat resembling, and little inferior to the Ribston Pippin.
A handsome and very excellent dessert apple; it is in use from October to February, and is not subject to be attacked with the grub as the Ribston Pippin is.
Raised from the seed of the Ribston Pippin at Osterley Park, the seat of the Earl of Jersey, near Isleworth, Middlesex, where the original tree is still in existence.