Adam's Apples

Today's Knobbed Russet is neither.  ¶  The twisted, glowering Knobbed Russet I reviewed in 2011 is more characteristic. I was strongly tempted to reuse its photo to show some of the deformity this variety can achieve  ¶  This Knobbed Russet has a reputation of being covertly tasty, a connoisseurs secret. It was the failure of my 2011 samples to meet that standard that made me especially pleased to try again. Today's apples are a pale gold, one with a small orange glow of a blush, both with fractal zig-zags of a rough brown russet.

I'm not certain today's apple is the true English Russet and would welcome any suggestions about that from my readers.  ¶  I do love a mystery . The above combination of rosy blush, light brown russet, and green-tinged yellow (in the unblushed peel) makes this sample a complex visual treat.

Egremont Russet is regularly available in supermarkets in the United Kingdom, and the sample in my first photo is one I found in London.  ¶  Its appearance, the rough golden brown with a bit of mustard yellow peeping though, was typical of the Egremonts I saw.  ¶  However, my freshest and best example was the one from Keeper's Nursery , and it looked just a little different.

A russeted sport of Norfolk Royal, mine is medium sized, classically shaped, and slightly oblate.  ¶  This apple features a partial red blush that is quite saturated in places over a pale yellow that is echoed by a pale olive-gold russet. It's hard to say, but I think the russet interrupts the blush and accounts for the more subdued pink areas surrounding the saturated red. The effect is very striking. The apple is modestly but definitely ribbed. 

Herefordshire, on the Welsh border, is a name to conjure with in apple and cider circles .  ¶  This apple wears a thin golden brown russet over yellow-green fruit  that has a small rosy pink blush.  ¶  It is medium sized and tapered. Are those dots lenticels or specs of russet (or both)?

The russet that jackets this medium-sized classically shaped apple is fine-textured and a little translucent. It coats every part of the apple with a thin golden mustard shell that has some olive-green highlights. Greenish lenticels are prominent and large. The small blushed area is smooth and tinted orange and brown. There are a few faint longitudinal green stripes beneath the russet.

This striking sample is small and oblate with minimal ribbing. The bumpy, textured coppery brown russet covers all, though it is thin enough in spots that the underlying green peers through. Judging from a tiny area at the lips of the (closed) calyx, this is a vivid saturated viridian. This one smells gently yeasty and has a very slight give when squeezed.

Pomme Gris (left) meets Ashmead's Kernel in a medley of fall colors I was lucky this fall to bag two superlative russet varieties, Pomme Gris and Ashmead's Kernel. These were the best examples of these varieties I have ever had. So which is best?

Medium-sized, large for a russet, this apple has a rough golden jacket over bright green peel. Some blushed stripes peep though at intervals, and a small patch of dull red blush is mostly russet free. Lenticels are also full of russet and really only noticeable in the blush, though they do bulge out slightly into small tactile bumps. Foolishly I held on to this one a few weeks longer than I needed and there's a bit of give to it when I squeeze, but russets can hold up marvelously and it is only November 12.

Its brooding appearance is daunting, but this was far from the most grotesque sample of this unusual apple. Others were so deformed as to be unrecognizable as part of any living organism, let alone as an apple. Instead, the medium-sized sample I chose shows a little of everything: Yellow skin, mottled translucent orange blush, and disfiguring russet. Or perhaps its knobby bulges are not related to the russet at all. Small lenticels, where visible, are mostly russeted. Where not deformed this apple seems to be modestly ribbed. Its calyx is open and it feels firm and solid. It glowers. As I contemplate this unusual variety, I wonder: what if this is not just a curiosity? What if it's really good? Only one way to find out.

I saved out one last russet apple from the fall and ate it today, the last of June. The apple was yielding in my hand, and its skin was wrinkled and smelled mossy. It looked like a little rotting pumpkin. But the flesh was sound and the flavors were wonderfully sweet, wildly concentrated pear and honey like ice wine after the freeze.

They make a distinct family of apples, yet all russets are not the same. The Golden and Roxbury varieties are so alike that some growers and sellers mislabel them (to my confusion ). So, let's set the record straight. On our left sits Roxbury Russet, an oblate, slightly ribbed medium-sized apple. Sometimes know as the Roz, this is one of America's oldest cultivated varieties.

A month after reviewing an apple sold as a Golden Russet, I began to suspect I'd had the wrong fruit (as explained here ). That was in 2008. I've since reviewed the real Golden Russet (obviously different) but remained unsure what the original apple was. It's now clear that the first apple was a Roxbury Russet. Indeed my own description —larger than most russets, somewhat oblate, with piebald russetting—is characteristic of the breed. I saw this confusion again this fall from another seller. (Meanwhile the first grower sold both Golden and Roxbury this past year, and got it right.) Maybe the natural variation in the appearance of these two varieties is great enough that either can sometimes resemble the other. The Roxbury Russet I reviewed in the fall of 2009  (right), with russet that is fuller and tawnier than most, looks a bit like a Golden (center) in ways my 2008 Roxbury (left) does not. ...

In season, Bolton Orchards ( map ) presses this elegant varietal sweet cider from the Golden Russet. This clear amber liquid is surely filtered, althou h the label only notes that the cider is UV pasteurized and has a little preservative added. There is absolutely no residue, and the cider is as transparent as filtered apple juice. This cider's flavor and aroma are both sweet, light, and with strong pear notes. Had someone told me this was pear juice I'd have believed it. Compared to regular pressed cider, GR cider is lighter and milder, as its appearance suggest. Like other cider, however, it is best served cold to mute an intense sweetness that would otherwise cloy.

If your idea of a russet apple is small and round, meet Hudson's Golden Gem. These conical apples are medium to medium-large and obviously ribbed. The russetting, like that of other varieties, is a treat to look at: rusty, toasty brown and not entirely opaque, creating subtly shifting colors wonderfully variegated.

A local apple—Roxbury today is part of Boston—these are medium to medium-large and only partly rusetted over spring green. Some have a coppery blush. The patchy russet is a grey brown and the underlying colors show through a little. Roxbury's lenticels are small and often rusetted; some are larger and slightly raised. My samples run from ribbed to slightly ribbed, with a closed calyx, and are quite firm in hand.

 ❝ What an apple, what suavity of aroma. Its initial Madeira-like mellowness of flavour overlies a deeper honeyed nuttiness, crisply sweet not sugar sweet, but the succulence of a well devilled marrow bone. Surely no apple of greater distinction or more perfect balance can ever have been raised anywhere on earth. — Morton Shand This lovely russet with the charming name has a rosy orange blush beneath its suede overcoat. Unblushed skin is green. It is a small medium and has large lenticels that are all rusetted over. The fruit's calyx is open but very shallow, and it has a pleasant faint smell of tea. I got two of these in early December, past their prime. I've tasted Ashmead's Kernel once before, and though I did not record my impressions I remember strong lemon and sugar notes and crisp firmness. The example shown in my photo is the only one I have seen with any so...

Got a few more of these at Red Apple Farm and they are in better shape than the one I initially reviewed, which may not even be a Golden Russet at all. These apples are coppery brown almost all over except around the crown and in streaks radiating down the side. A few have slightly larger unruseted patches. They are small (or on the larger side of small) and slightly ribbed, with open calyxes The flesh of Golden Russet is crisp and juicy, creamy yellow, and coarse. Clean sweet-tart balance with a little bracing acidity, notes of cane sugar, vanilla, lemon, and pear. Nice!

I now suspect that my original Golden Russet review may have been based on the wrong apple. In any case, it does not describe a representative sample of this variety, several of which I have been enjoying since Thanksgiving. Consequently I plan on retitling have retitled my first review "Mystery Russet" and will post have posted a new Golden Russet description shortly . This russet from Kimball I originally bought an apple so labeled from Kimball Farm at the Arlington Farmer's Market in October, and wrote up a review accordingly. I'd have bought more than one but was back then was straining to taste as many of the then-dizzying number of varieties as I could. That apple was interesting but a little mealy. I did the best I could with it.

My photograph fails to do justice to this understated Vermeer of an apple, with its deep orange red blush peeping though a painterly coating of rusty brown. These russets are medium-small and well-formed with a hint of ribbing. The russet covers most of the skin, which is silvery green except for the blush. Large irregular lenticels are most prominent in the unblushed areas and match the skin. There are also smooth orange patches in the russet, though it's hard to say in which layer the source of that color lies. Click on the photo for a close-up.