Hawkeye vs. Red Delicious

A Red Delicious, once America's apple, fresh from the supermarket. Hint: It's the tall one on the left.

And the fabled Hawkeye, a seedling found growing on a Quaker's Iowa farm nearly 150 years ago. Here from an Indiana orchard.

But surely you know the story that connects these apples.

How it was

How the farmer, Jesse Hiatt, chopped back the seedling to a stump, not once but twice, because it did not belong between the rows of his Yellow Bellflower trees. A weed.

How, when the tree came back in the third year, Hiatt relented, and tended it. "If thee must grow, thee may," he is said to have said.

How he named the fruit in token of his adopted state, and how he came to promote the virtues of Hawkeye for the rest of his life.

How finally the Stark brothers bought all rights to it in 1894.

How Stark rebranded and promoted the fruit, which proved popular; how sports (not cross breeding) to make it redder and sturdier and more shippable and more profitable, caught on; how sometimes there was sport unto sport unto sport.

How none of those sports involved better taste or texture.

How that is the way we got the Red Delicious, shaping it on the lathe of our desire from the living flesh of Hawkeye.

Delicious, before it was Red (1907)

So, dearly beloved, let us gather and taste clearly what Nature provided, and what we made of it.

Sultry Red and Wholesome Hawkeye

Orange-striped Hawkeye is attractive. The deep, saturated, purple tinged blush of the curvaceous Red Delicious is designed to seduce.

Glossy with wax, freckled with lenticels, tall and tapered, Red beckons.

What's alike about these apples?

My camera angle may not show it clearly for Hawkeye, but both apples rest on five little "chins" that project around the calyx. (Which is open on Red and closed on Hawkeye.)

The light lenticel dots are more prominent against Red D's deep purple-tinged blush, but they are visible on both apples.

Both are ribbed.

The stems are similar, though Red's takes some of the deep red color for itself, and sits in a deeper stem well.

Let's eat

My Hawkeyes have, unfortunately, deteriorated in quality while in storage. They are still good to eat, yet compared to my original tasting sample are softer, and their flavors have melded.

They still bear moderate flavors, including the citric note that, in the better sample, reminded me of tangerine.

There is also a fuller, rounder, more buttery taste, like banana or vanilla but less defined.

My Red Delicious has fared better, perhaps because it has been in my refrigerator for less time, but also probably because of that coating of wax.

Also, this is a better Red D than my review sample 13 years ago. 

It actually has some flavor, a bit like table grapes, and also just a little grassy.

This Red has retained a bit of a crunch in its off-white flesh that is a bit less yellow than Hawkeye's. Its flesh also has small red spots. I think of these as signs of ripeness.

Red's thick skin is chewy and not great to eat, but not offensively so.

I admit: I really did not expect Red Delicious to hold up so well in this comparison.

I wrote my Hawkeye review notes weeks ago, and that fresh sample was a revelation—better than either of these.

Nonetheless it is possible to taste how these apples are related, despite their respective conditions and widely varying appearance.