Adam's Apples

True to its name, this medium-to-medium-large apple has a lovely pure red blush. The color, a shade less orange than in my photo, can be deep and even dark on the sunward side but unlike some well-colored varieties is not purple. Tan lenticels, though numerous, are so small as to be hard to see, making for a very red apple. The fruit is classically shaped with some ribbing.

If you read this in September and are enjoying McIntosh, you are in good company. This quintessential New England apple, crisp, flavorful, and juicy with plenty of sugar and tart, is a classic.  ¶  But what do you eat in October or August? And what other apples might you like?  ¶  If you don't know, or would like to broaden your horizons, here are my suggestions.

Today I could have bought 26 different kinds of apples at 4 different farm stands. 28 if you count all 3 versions of Cortland as separate varieties. I was not so extravagant as that, but the choices this time of year are great!

In August there are many different apples sold as "Early Mac," none of them McIntosh. In the same spirit Hutchins Farm  once called this September apple an "Early Jonagold" after the Jonathan–Golden Delicious cross, though its real name is Autumn Crisp. So: not a Jonagold that was picked too soon, but a different variety altogether. Mine is hefty with a streaky, even blotchy, red blush over yellow. This gives an orange tinge though perhaps a shade less so than my photo implies. Autumn Crisp is decorated with many irregularly placed light lenticels. The surface is also slightly dimpled, like a Honeycrisp.

Two apples from the vast family tree of Golden Delicious, both ready about the same time in September, both medium-sized yellow with pretty blushes. Here's how they stack up.

"Green Crisp" is very apt. But the truth is that not even the grower knows the true name of this apple, or even if it has one. Green Crisp is a lovely light spring green, conical and ribbed. It is a medium-to-medium-large apple with small dark lenticels that are not obvious, except where russetted. The fruit feels quite firm and smells faintly of moss. Inside is firm white flesh, crisp and pleasantly juicy, that is halfway between fine-grained and coarse.

Greetings Adam, I'm wondering if I might be able to use one of your photographs for an image for an opera production I'm doing (very soon) in NYC. The above in my in-box last month, and of course I had to say yes. But yes to what, exactly? What could one of my apples possibly have to do with a production of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, to be staged in Bryant Park at 12:30 pm on September 19? As it turns out, this will be a performance of the first two acts of the opera only. But the question still remains: Why is half an apple like half an opera?