Posted by Tom Napier on September 03, 2013 at 05:45:19 user Didymus.
On rereading PP I noticed that the children ate Newton Pippins. (Start of Ch 26.) Never having heard of them, I looked them up. Apparently they were extensively imported to Britain from the eastern USA in the 1930s but haven't been since WWII started. They have since been supplanted by other varieties.
Distantly related question: When I lived in the UK my favo[u]rite apple was the Cox's Orange Pippin. (We used to get a crate of them for Christmas.) I've never seen them on sale in the US and I heard a rumo[u]r that they could no longer be sold in Britain as they weren't on the EU list of approved varieties. Is this so?