Adam's Apples

Which of these apples is a 150-year-old heirloom? is from a local (Massachusetts) orchard? is commonly sold in supermarkets and grocery stores across North America? If you've been reading my blog you know the answer. You also know that this is a trick question.

Take number 2, this time with a local Red Delicious. America gets its fruit at the supermarket, and that determines what we eat and what farmers grow. So I thought it fair and reasonable to compare these apples using a store-bought Red Delicious. Which I did .

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.

IF THEE MUST GROW, THEE MAY  ¶  I never thought to taste this apple, discovered by a farmer in Iowa nearly 150 years ago. It has been superseded by history. Hawkeye was purchased by Stark Brothers and then modified by sport after sport to be nearly unrecognizable. You surely know it, as Red Delicious .

For today's apple comparison, savor the delicious word salad that is "red delicious sweet cheeks." Say it aloud several times. Revel in its absurdity.

From U.S. Plant Patent No. 90 , circa 1934: My invention relates to improvements in apples of the type depending on color and earliness of coloring for a portion of their commercial value. The objects of my improvement are, first, to provide an apple of the well-known Delicious type which will color about two weeks earlier than the Delicious and therefore be ready to reach the earlier and higher priced markets; and second, to secure on each tree a higher percentage of fruits having the desired high coloring.

Breed the noble McIntosh with the ubiquitous Delicious, and you'll get a different variety every time you do . But when the  New York State Agricultural Experiment Station at Cornell University did so in 1945, it created Empire . This apple is a reliable, crisp variety that boasts generic versions of the berry-and-wine flavors that characterize most of the vast McIntosh family.

I may have been a bit hard on Red Delicious earlier. I've never hidden my tastes, and there are more than a few apples that don't thrill me. But my actual feeling is, the more varieties the better, whether or not they are my personal favorites. In that respect, the story of Red Delicious is a cautionary tale. Since its discovery more than a century ago, Red Delicious (originally "Hawkeye") has been mercilessly tweaked by breeders, growers, and market forces to produce the elongated bright red fruit we know today.  These are beautiful, indestructible, shippable, commercial, and tasteless. And, we love them. Or did.

Perfect, sultry Red Delicious was my childhood favorite, but I haven't had one in decades. Will this apple be my Proustian madeline? Everyone probably knows Red Delicious: large, ribbed, impossibly elongated, and a beautiful glossy red with deep purplish streaks, freckled attractively with many light lenticels. Its characteristic conical shape tapers down to prominent bumps or "chins" at its base. This is the apple the witch gave to Snow White. My sample is extra shiny from wax.