steepholm

It's something I'd like to know more about, too. The first plant I bought when I moved to this house was an apple tree, and it produces very tasty apples when I get there before the slugs, but I've entirely forgotten the name of the breed!

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If you go to the rather site at Brogdale has, you can probably work it out. Or you could take the route of high finances and send them a sample and get them to do it: http://www.brogdalecollections.co.uk/brogdale-identification.html

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I think I can live with the uncertainty, but I'm very glad to know that such a place exists! Dr Joan Morgan has the best job in the world: Fruit Detective.

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I love it that they're documenting and collecting. All my favourite apples are older, and I fear they'll fade...

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kalimac.livejournal.com

An article in The New Yorker on apple varieties a few years ago explained that they all begin crisp, but gradually are bred towards the mealy to improve their storage and transport capacity. This turns them less popular, so new breeds are developed and the cycle begins again.

My tastes are similar to yours - I liked the Delicious some half a century gone, but haven't touched them for decades, went through Granny Smith and Pippin for a while, and now favor the Braeburn and Jazz, along with two other varieties often found here, Fuji and Honeycrisp.

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That cycle idea sounds very plausible. In which connection, I don't remember seeing Jazz at all until about five years ago. I wonder if they're a new breed?

Honeycrisp I don't recognize, but Fuji is a familiar name: I'm not sure whether I've ever tried them.

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I agree. Jazz started showing up here, in Boston, about two years ago, mainly at Trader Joe's. Small but really good. Honeycrisps in the fall (um, autumn) can be great.

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Never eaten Jazz. I think because I buy orchard apples, and it hasn't been much planted here. Turns out to be a Braeburn x Gala cross.

Nine

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eglantine-br.livejournal.com

I remember as a child, the first time I ever ate a Granny Smith. I was at a friends house. My mother only ever bought Macentosh. Those are like bags of mush. Horrid.

I find that there are few kinds of apples available. I like Braeburn, Gala, Granny Smith. Probably in that order. I cook with apples too, so I like one that holds up.

I wish there were more varieties available.

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Macentosh is new to me - but it sounds like I've not missed much.

Cooking apples are a whole other ball game. We had a couple of Bramley trees when I was a child, and I grew up on pies, crumbles and charlottes made from them, so I think I have a natural Bramley bias.

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ethelmay.livejournal.com

I thought I remembered McIntosh apples being good when I was in New England, but maybe what I remember is people telling me how they used to be good but now you should get some other kind, Northern Spy or something. You are fortunate if you have never met a Red Delicious. My mother bought them for a centerpiece now and again because they looked pretty, but otherwise they were no good at all. I just checked the refrigerator and we currently have Fuji apples on hand. They're getting past their best at this time of year, but they're basically quite a good variety.

I did a semester abroad in Oxford when I was in college, and while I was there lived mainly on oatmeal and stewed Bramley apples.

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Northern Spy? I like the sound of them!

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They're quintessentially New England apples, thin-skinned, bullet-hard, and tart.

But here under the apple tree
I loved and watched and pruned
With gnarled hands
In the long, long years;
Here under the roots of this northern-spy
To move in the chemic change and circle of life,
Into the soil and into the flesh of the tree,
And into the living epitaphs
Of redder apples!

--Edgar Lee Masters

Nine

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diceytillerman.livejournal.com

In my experience, Macintosh are fabulous and not mealy at all. But maybe you need to be near where they grow?

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I do think there are variants within the variants, for Macintoshs were good when I was a kid and are unavailable outside specialist farms now, and Red Delicious were what they were called when I was a kid and I avoid them like the plague now.

Edited Date: 2013-03-10 02:47 am (UTC)

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Macintosh were really good, and not at all mealy, when I was a child. And Red Delicious were also very crisp. They had certainly turned to garbage by the time I was in grad school, in the eighties.

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shewhomust.livejournal.com

Like you, I buy Coxes when they first appear, russets for the novelty during their short season, and Braeburns when there's nothing more exciting on offer. I can always be tempted by an apple I've never met before, especially if it doesn't stress how sweet it is...

In defence of the Golden Delicious: I'd not buy them for eating, but if you want an apple which doesn't collapse in cooking - for a French-style tart, for example - it's a good option.

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Okay - I'll give Golden Delicious a try next time I make an apple tart, with sugar and cinnamon to cover its nakedness.

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adaese.livejournal.com

My mother has Cox trees. The apples are lovely when they're really fresh.

Best apple I ever tasted was a variety called Pitmaston Pineapple. Yellow, very sweet. I understand it only fruits once every two years, and is therefore never grown commercially.

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I like the sound of the Pitmaston Pineapple!

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Malo: I would rather be
Malo: In an apple tree
Malo: Than a naughty boy
Malo: In adversity

I have a book of cultivars (like these, but with paintings), most of which I've never tasted. I am fond of a Macoun. They're the falliest apple: not mists-and-mellow-fruitfulness, but a sharp-sweet crunch.

Nine

Edited Date: 2013-03-09 07:45 pm (UTC)

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Falls and apples ever did go together. (Was that boy in the apple tree named Felix Culpepper?)

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joyeuce

I have never before come across anyone who knew this rhyme! In the version my father taught me, the last two lines were:

Malo: Than a wicked man
Malo: In damnesiam!

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There's a delicately creepy setting for that rhyme by Benjamin Britten: he's given it to the haunted child Miles in his opera of The Turn of the Screw.

Nine

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Yes, I was going to mention. Miles pronounces them all the same way, but that's wrong. I mean in reality. In opera it's right.

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ethelmay.livejournal.com

Macouns, yes, I remember that name now. (I am terrible at remembering names of foods, for some reason. Aphasia culinaria, or something. Fortunately my husband is pretty good at it.)

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Mea pater mater malum est.

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Which being translated out of the original tongue, and the translation diligently compared, yields:

"Come father, mother is eating an apple."

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rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com

My favorites are Honeycrisp. Also quite fond of lady-apples.

I prefer Fuji in all applications when I can get them, but if stuck with a Golden Delicious the answer is cooking, especially in otherwise savory or savory-ish menus. Recently had a Golden Delicious left over from a well-meaning guest and roasted it in the oven along with purple carrots and garlic and shallot and tofu, and that turned out very well indeed. But I wouldn't have eaten the damn thing raw.

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Okay, I may try the Golden Delicious in a tart or roasted - but it sounds as if it needs a lot of help to be palatable!

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tekalynn.livejournal.com

I wouldn't eat a Granny Smith out of hand. That, to me, is a cooking apple.

I'm quite fond of (in no particular order) Gala, Fuji, and Braeburn apples. Those are my usual go-to varieties. This year, I was introduced to the Lady Alice, and quite liked her.

We have a Gravenstein in the backyard, and last year's yield was incredible. I am sorry to say that we got tired of apple pie. ("Tired of apple pie" should be on a list of Impossible Things).

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"Tired of apple pie" should be on a list of Impossible Things, indeed. As it is, it reminds me of Russell Hoban's Frances: "What I am, is tired of jam."

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