Apple season is upon us

October 21, 2023 by
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We are just at peak apple season, and every roadside stand and farmers market is brimming with bushel baskets of local apples. If you are lucky, there could be upward of a dozen varieties for you to choose from, with a range of characteristics. Some are perfect for eating out of hand, others are great for making cider or applesauce, and a few are all-around winners. It’s tempting to think we live in a golden age of apples, as new varieties are introduced every year. But as Matthew Zuras explains at Epicurious, our choices are modest compared to what was available over 100 years ago.

Zuras says that in the mid 1800s in the US, there were over 17,000 named varieties of apples. Less than a third of those remain today, and the options available for consumers to purchase are much more limited. Since apples are not native to the US, you many wonder how we got so many varieties in the first place. The answer lies in apple genetics – apples, like humans, inherit a full set of genes from both parents. If you plant a seed from a Honeycrisp apple, the fruit you would get from the resulting tree wouldn’t be Honeycrisp, and you would be rolling the dice as to whether it would be crips and sweet or lip-puckeringly sour. The only way to get more Honeycrisp apples is to take cuttings from a Honeycrisp tree and graft them onto another rootstock. In essence, all commercial apples are clones.

A variety of factors led to the decline of multitudinous cultivars, as Zuras explains. One reason many types of apples were lost was Prohibition. Apples could be used to make hard cider, so entire orchards were destroyed to prevent anyone from using the apples in this manner. Now the tide seems to have turned, and botanists are busy developing new types of apples. We may never have 17,000 varieties again, but we have plenty from which to choose. There are several small orchards around the town where I live, and I enjoy trying as many kinds of apples as I can. My current favorites are Honeygold for eating out of hand and Haralson, Wealthy, and Fireside for baking. What’s your favorite variety of apple?

Category: Antipasto

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13 Comments

  • FuzzyChef  on  October 22, 2023

    Arkansas Black

  • averythingcooks  on  October 22, 2023

    I’m pretty standard re: my 1st choice apples…MacIntosh (and based on figures re: country wide production, the most popular apple in Canada ) for pies and Granny Smith for eating. We have also made a lot of apple sauce over the years but I’m fast becoming a convert to apple butter which I made and canned last year.

    CBC radio also ran an interview in the last couple of weeks explaining the difference b/w planting from seed vs from cuttings. I also just read that the crab apple is the only apple native to North America.

  • KatieK1  on  October 22, 2023

    If you’re lucky, in the spring you may find morels at the bases of those apple trees.

    I use golden delicious apples for the tarte tatin I make from an old Jacques Pépin recipe.

  • Frogcake  on  October 22, 2023

    I love early Paula Red and Cortland apples, which are very crispy and sweet tart for eating. Love macintosh and Cortlands for cooking too. I’ve been making apple butter, apple sauce, apple crisp and pies for decades now. Occasionally, I make apple strudel and freeze it for Christmas morning. This morning I made a loaf of apple cider bread for breakfast. I always wanted to have an apple orchard in my backyard! Not a good tree to have in Vancouver because the bears like to eat the apples!

  • hillsboroks  on  October 22, 2023

    For 41 years we tended and babied about 8 full size heirloom Gravenstein apple trees that were in the yard. Based on the age of the old house next door (our house was built in the orchard) we think these trees were from the 1870s or 1880s. Over the years wind storms, ice storms and old age took out all but two of the old beauties. But these apples were the absolute best for pies and applesauce. A couple of years before we moved we grafted about 10 young trees from them and this year was the first year we had an abundant crop from two of the new trees we kept for ourselves.

  • cookbookaddict2020  on  October 22, 2023

    honeycrisps and cosmic crisps for eating raw. I use galas for baking into cakes since they get so velvety. Never heard of any of the varieties you mention – I don’t think we have those in N Cal.

  • lean1  on  October 23, 2023

    Northern spy apples are my favorite and hard to find. They are hard crisp and perfect for baked apples and eating out of hand

  • KarinaFrancis  on  October 23, 2023

    Pink Lady is my favourite – crisp, sweet and tangy. The perfect eating apple.

  • sayeater  on  November 2, 2023

    Crispin (Mutsu)!

  • reader1trees  on  November 3, 2023

    For eating Worcester Pearmains, Egremont Russet, Scrumptious and Lime Light. For cooking it has to be Bramley’s sometimes mixed with Granny Smith’s.

  • bittrette  on  November 6, 2023

    For eating: McIntosh, with Ginger Gold as my second choice. But Macs have been a crapshoot lately: some are mealy, others are very sour.
    For sauce, my chief use for apples these days, I like a mix of sweet and tart. Unfortunately, tart apples other than Granny Smith are hard to find, and I find Granny Smith bad for sauce because it keeps its shape too much. When I can find them I like Mutsu, Greenings or Lodi. The sweet varieties I like for sauce include Braeburn and members of the Jonathan, .McIntosh and Winesap families, but there are so many good sweet apples that another variety is always welcome, except for Red Delicious and Sugar Bee. Then there’s the old standby Golden Delicious.
    Northern Spy is hands down the best apple for pie. It’s hard to find but if you see it for sale, go for it!

  • bittrette  on  November 6, 2023

    A funny but welcome thing has happened to Honeycrisp apples: the price of Honeycrisp has come down to the level of most other apples. In farmers’ markets and produce stores here in NYC – everywhere except supermarkets, at least at my regular supermarket.

  • vermonter  on  November 12, 2023

    Darcie, you’re lucky to be able to find Wealthy. It’s fabulous for pies, no doubt other dishes. Very early season, often before people are thinking about baking. People might want to research online any orchards featuring heirloom apples near them. There’s an orchard near me growing 130 varieties, mostly heirlooms both American and British, wonderful flavors.

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