In article ,
Richard Wright wrote:
Can somebody please identify the fruit contained in the bottle
illustrated at

http://www.box.net/public/static/490zvq1gf6.jpg

It tastes almost exactly like the European gooseberry Ribes
uva-crispa, but clearly is not.

The fruit is the size of an olive and, as the photo shows, seems to
have had a stone removed.

It is a product of China.

I agree that it looks like a pome fruit. The leaves in the picture
are lobed, like many Crataegus spp (hawthorns). I don't think it was
a stone removed -- more like the whole core punched out, as is often
done with pickled crabapples.

Note that there are literally hundreds of species and hybrids in
Malus (apples), Pyrus (pears), Crataegus (hawthorns) and other
pome genera, and some may have been selected for larger fruit in
some area of China. Note also that olives vary a lot in size... ;-)

Cripes, it could be an unusually meaty rosehip or a little known
type of loquat or a Chaenomeles quince.

Perhaps you can find someone to translate the Chinese for you, but
common names are no more scientifically accurate in Chinese than in
European languages. My first thought, before I looked at the picture,
was jujubes (Zizyphus sp), which are called red dates or thorn dates
in Chinese although they are completely unrelated to dates or AFAIK,
pome fruits.

Let us know if you find out.