Adam's Apples

Not the shoe and not the fabric, today's fruit is named for its unusual deep color and a county in western Maine. It is small and quite dark, spattered with rust-colored lenticels like some polished victorian curio of exotic hardwood or stone. The blush is a deep red with purple overtones, almost mahogany, sometimes described as having a blackish bloom. The apple is slightly ribbed and classically shaped, round to conical. Its unbroken peel has a faint grassy smell.

The apple thought of the day must surely be this one, about Hawkeye's slow evolution into Red Delicious: More than 30 mutations later, we have an apple that’s gotten redder and redder, with lots of emphasis on an elongated conic nose.... The ones in a supermarket could be as much as a year old, and they’ve had quite a journey.... So when you bite into one, you’re often disappointed.

I snagged a small bag of these elusive apples this year and a few were in pretty good shape. So while I am keeping my original review in place (of an imperfect sample), here are tasting notes based on fresher fruit. Esopus Spitzenberg is attractive: large and classically shaped with prominent ribs and a slightly conical profile. The red blush has a matte finish and runs from various shades of true red to orange to the underlying yellow. Many large irregular tan lenticels accentuate the shape.

John Henderson, a farmer and social-sciences librarian at Ithaca College (New York), shares three generations of apple lore and memories at My Grandpap's Apple Orchard. This no-frills web site succeeds on several levels: as a catalog of apple descriptions, a collection of memories and stories, and an an impressive and well organized collection of links, categorized with a librarian's sensibility.

The apple-blogging niche is not crowded, but things change and people come and go. Here is where things stand at the end of 2010.

Besides the blush, this apple is really two-toned: a banana yellow (sure enough) tinged a little with green, and a distinctly green-yellow hue. Flecked with brown lenticels, the resemblance to the long tropical fruit is clear, if not necessarily obvious. The blush is small, a light pink whose translucency, over the yellow, makes a peachy orange. The general effect is striking. The apple runs medium to large and is ribbed and slightly conical. The skin is naturally waxy. A week off the tree it is firm and has a sweet grassy fragrance.

"Ananas" is "pineapple" in French. This small-to-medium variety is ribbed and conical. I selected the apple for today's photoshoot for its striking lime-green stripes over a lighter spring green. However, some other samples have distinctly yellow regions, and one has a pale orange blush over one third of its surface.