This upright-spreading tree is vigorous, hardy, and long-lived. It crops heavily and thinning is needed to maintain annual bearing. Fameuse is resistant to canker and mildew, but susceptible to fireblight and collar rot, and very susceptible to scab. This tree is partially self-fertile, but cropping will be improved by the presence of a pollenizer.

A smallish fruit with delicate, thin, red skin over snow-white flesh, Fameuse ripens late September in upstate New York and, if free of scab damage, can be stored through winter. In Apples of New York, Beach writes that Fameuse is "one of the most desirable dessert apples of its season." The flesh is tender and very juicy, with an excellent sub-acid, strawberry-scented flavor. Too soft for most bakers, it is an outstanding dessert apple that deserves a place in the garden of anyone who cares more about flavor than commercial utility.

Fameuse was a very popular apple in New England and the Quebec area of Canada until the 1800's, when either disease or frost decimated plantings and it was supplanted by McIntosh, which is probably one of its descendants. This apple was a favorite of the poet Robert Frost, and there is an old Fameuse tree still standing on his farm.