Adam's Apples

This attractive variety has a red blush over yellow green, accented by many tiny light lenticels. At its deepest the blush comprises darker and lighter streaks together.  The lenticels, which are dark green in the unblushed skin, crowd the bottom third of the fruit and grow sparse near the top. Braeburn runs medium to large and is moderately ribbed. My sample is fragrant, firm, and (see the photo) glistening with wax.

One of my favorites of the industrial apples that are available in the off-season, Pink Lady is named for her distinctive orange-fuchsia blush, which covers an otherwise green yellow.  Light lenticels correspond with minor dimples in the surface of the fruit, which runs medium to large and has a soft sweet smell of pear, melon, and cider. The apple feels firm. Pink Lady's flesh is on the coarse side of dense and a creamy light yellow, crisp (though not breaking) and juicy. Her flavor is sweet with some tartness and offers distinct cantaloupe and honeydew notes, with a hint of orange juice.

The blush on this attractive, medium-large apple is saturated over about half the otherwise green-yellow surface and is streaky or blotchy elsewhere.  The fruit is conical and decorated with small light lenticels in a bottom-to-top pattern: many clustered together it the bottom but few at the top. The effect is as if they are radiating or rising from the base like bubbles in a champagne glass. The unbroken fruit is reasonably firm and has only a very faint sweet aroma.

Distinctive Granny Smith breaks the mold of sweet-and-similar industrial apples. It packs some real acidity. And, that color! Large and classically shaped, this variety is slightly ribbed and slightly tapered (though more cylindrical than conical). The skin is a beautiful spring green, on closer inspection resolving into two distinct shades. In the stem well and elsewhere the color is rich and saturated. In many other regions the green is glazed and milky. These two veridian tints mix in streaks on most of the surface. The many large lenticels are lightest of all. The apple is firm and its aroma has citrusy overtones.

G'day! The harvest is in Down Under, and apples from the Southern Hemisphere have arrived in our New England markets. The same varieties grow just fine here and many are available year round. However, I have arbitrarily waited until now before reviewing any of the many varieties that originated south of equator.

Fuji can be big, but my sample is at best a large medium. It is only very slightly ribbed, and the shape might be conical but with very little in the way of taper, for an almost rectangular profile. The skin is yellow-green with a red blush that is light and streaky in most places; my photo favors a more-saturated patch, which shows the light lenticels to best advantage. The apple has a sweet cidery aroma.

A chance seedling from Washington State, Cameo is large and tapered with an attractive variegated red blush over yellow.  The many large light lenticels add to the effect, which almost seems to be in motion, flickering across all the shades from yellow to orange to red.  Even after considerable storage, the unbroken apple is firm and quite fragrant, with tropical-fruit notes.

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.

My medium-large Golden Delicious is a cheerful yellow tinged with green. It has distinctive dark green lenticels that fade to nearly nothing on the blushed area, which is a faint orange pink. My example is ribbed and conical, with a round ridge of chins at the bottom, and theres a small stellation of russet radiating within the stem well.

The blush on this apple often runs to a handsome deep purplish red, decorated with many light lenticels. Even where the blush is uneven and streaky, (over yellow green), some of the stripes may reach this deep color. The fruit is a large medium, moderately ribbed, and can be conical, as in our photo. There are faint dull patches on the skin of my sample that are almost like a bloom, but I take them to be scuffs in the wax that is regularly applied to apples shipped across country. For Empires keep and travel well, and even though they are grown locally the Empires sold out of season generally come from New York (where they were bred) or farther. This is the time of year I start to eat a lot of them.

This McIntosh cross (with Ben Davis, a nearly defunct variety) is prized for salads and fruit cups because it browns only slowly when cut. But doesn't it deserve to be taken seriously for its other qualities? Cortland has been around for more than a century.