Today's apple is large, very tapered and modestly ribbed. It's colored with a mixture of an orange pink, yellow, and yellow green.
Yellow-green dots are small and fused together at the base, becoming larger and distinct further up. There's a green dimple on one side.
It's really pretty, don't you think? That peachy color.
Its calyx is closed.
Inside scoop
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| Green dimple at lower left |
It's the pink-grapefruit of the flesh itself, filtered through the peel.
Not a huge surprise, given this spoiler:
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In the bite photo, you can see not only the vibrant saturated color of the flesh, but also its coarse granularity, a characteristic of many red-flesh varieties. (Click the photo for a close up).
Kissabel is breaking crisp and may be the juiciest red-flesh apple I've ever tasted. Oddly, the granular quality of the flesh gives an illusion of dryness, an interesting contrast.
Eating further unearths (unpommes?) a gem-like region of saturated deep pink near the core at the stem end.
Um, flavor?
This, plus the very good texture, would be interesting even if eaten in the dark. I recommend trying one if you get the chance. But the flavors do not hang together very well.
Nowadays there seems to be a quest among breeders for a red-fleshed apple that is more than a novelty. I don't think we are there yet, but Kissabel is an exemplar of the breeder's art.
Sorcerer's apprentice apples
This paper (at 199) lists a third variety, Orange. I am guessing mine is Orange, but maybe it is Yellow.
The paper names International Fruit Obtention as the patent holder. The company features not three but six Kissabels in its website (scroll down).
One, two, three, six! They just keep multiplying.
According to their respective patents, three are Golden Delicious crosses with "SJ109." I assume that's a red-fleshed crab that may not be patented.
Those are the orange and yellow Kissabels.
The three red Kissabels are all MNR33S1A51 x Galaxy crosses. (MNR33S1A51 is an unpatented variety.)
Remember that breeders give their apples unlovely names, so that they can continue to charge a license to use the trademark once the patent expires.
Here are the three yellow and orange varieties (Golden Delicious x SJ109) with links to their patents.
- Y101 has "red-orange" skin and is ripe "7–10 days earlier than Golden Delicious"
- Y102 has "dark orange-yellow" skin and is ready "5–10 days later than Golden Delicious"
- Y103 has "brown orange" skin and ripens "10–15 days earlier than Golden Delicious"
The patents show that while they may all have the same parents, these are three different varieties.
I don't know how these correspond to the Yellow or Orange modifiers, or which one of these I've got. (Presumably Red refers to the other trio.)
There's no "Rosetta Stone" that links the colors of Kissabel to the actual patented names.
But based on everything I've dug up, I'd guess I've got Y103.
I have a handfull of seedlings of Grenadine x Gold Rush (yellow delicious genes) that look a lot like that, with that same color through the skin effect, which is seen also in Pink Pearl. They all have some issue or other. Flesh color development can be a dicey at times. One has a banana taste, antoher vanilla like, all have different (and variable) degrees of "red flesh flavor". I'm not sure any are really going places yet, though some are worth growing and two, Pink Lemonade and Vanilla Pink are already in circulation among fruit people. My best red flesh seedling is certainly more than a novelty, but it needs further assessment. It is a different animal. Getting the very highest red flesh flavors, consistently, in a really good dessert apple, might take a while, but it is well on the way at least. Combining that with shipability, keeping and other traits compatible with the industrial model makes it a lot harder.
ReplyDeleteLucy Glow has a similar red-flesh-through-thin yellow-skin appearance.
DeleteI suspect what breeders are chasing is a red-fleshed Honeycrisp type. Yours sound a good deal more interesting than that!
Seems like we have lost something when it takes a patent description to figure out which apple it is. The old apples came with a good story to go with the description. Don't think I am excited to look for a Y103.
ReplyDeleteNowadays it's hard to learn the lineage of an apple anyplace else. The six Kissabels are an extreme case of confusion, though.
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