Cox's is top of the pips as the nation's favourite apple

The old favourite among Britain's apples, the Cox's orange pippin, has reclaimed its best-selling place in the supermarkets.

The old favourite among Britain's apples, the Cox's orange pippin, has reclaimed its best-selling place in the supermarkets.

Because of a bumper harvest, in many stores it has overtaken the Braeburn, the relative newcomer which was the top selling apple in the country.

The Braeburn's success in recent years has been a triumph of commercial organisation. Its resplendent red and green skin makes it the most visually attractive of all the apples generally on sale, and more importantly, it is available all 52 weeks of the year. The Cox, by contrast, is available only for seven or eight months.

But taste will sometimes win through, and many of the big supermarket chains report that when the Cox is available it remains most people's favourite: it is crisp and sweetly-tangy like the Braeburn, but it has an added aromatic quality. And this autumn has seen one of the biggest-ever harvests of English Coxes.

"This year's UK crop of Cox is fantastic and it is outselling Braeburn," said a spokesman for Tesco, the market leader which says it is selling about 35 per cent of the British crop. "As soon as the tree-ripe English Coxes came in, they outsold Braeburn," said a spokeswoman for Marks and Spencer. The Cox is the only old traditional English apple variety which remains a top seller.

After Braeburn, the most popular varieties are more recent strains from abroad such as Royal Gala, and in some stores the Pink Lady, a Franco-Australian apple which is said to have a sherbetty fizz when bitten. These are ahead of older favourites such as Granny Smiths and Golden Delicious, which are also foreign-grown.

The only other traditional British apple which remains a major seller at all – out of the more than 2,300 varieties known – is the Egremont Russett, which is preferred by older consumers.