#apple varieties

1) The Friar

2) The Old Pearmain

3) The Cowarne Red

4) The Garter Apple

5) Stead’s Kernel Apple

6) The Siberian Harvey

7) The Golden Harvey or Brandy Apple

8) The Bennett Apple

9) The Old Quining

10) The Yellow Elliot

Coloured engravings of the old Cider and Perry Fruits of Herefordshire.

Taken from ‘Pomona Herefordiensis’ by Thomas Andrew Knight.

Published 1811 by The Agricultural Society of Herefordshire.

Natural History Museum Library, London

The Red Delicious was not bred for taste, but for the toughness of its skin and its resistance to developing blemishes. Admittedly, it is a very pretty and hardy skin, and for that reason it was selected as one of the breeding parents of the Cosmic Crisp.

Golden Delicious apples have nothing to do with Red Delicious, and are in fact an American heirloom variety over 100 years old. They keep extremely poorly, so if you've never had them fresh in-season, you've likely only had really crappy ones.

Granny Smith are not "tangy". They are actively sour. They are also likely a crab apple x domestic hybrid, a rarety among commercial apples.*

Pink Lady is a trademark- the variety is Cripps Pink. They are a surprisingly excellent storage apple, and I recommend them for eating all year round.

Honeycrisp are a surprisingly horrible storage apple. They keep their taste, but the characteristic juiciness fades as the apple ages and dries out. And their season is way shorter than their ubiquity in supermarkets would indicate.. Not worth the premium price - buy them in season (late summer to mid fall-ish), they're usually cheapest then anyway.

Tune in next time when I start in on the other 1000+ apple varieties!

Today's Pieces of Iowa's Past is about Iowa apples! Specifically about Iowa's display of apples at The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, informally known as the St. Louis World's Fair, in 1904.

Iowa displayed over 300 varieties of apples! omg!

Iowa was unexcelled in apples!

Okay but consider: Sterling is a delight because you love to hate him, and therefore even he is superior to The Trash Apple. I contend that he is a McIntosh, which is better than a Red Delicious in most ways, but still (probably? hopefully?) not anybody’s favorite apple.

I definitely like Granny Smith for Parker. It’s a very versatile apple! Just like our girl. A little tart, and she can do it all! She’s a sauce, she’s a pie, she’s an after-school snack, she’s- okay this is sounding like a sex thing. I swear it’s not.

I like Fuji apples for Eliot. They’re fairly tart, but still a pretty solidly sweet apple, and they’re great in savory dishes. Highly recommend making salads with Fuji apples. It’s a good choice to add an unexpected layer of complexity to a dish. Just like Eliot.

Alright, my bias is officially showing. I’m giving my favorite apple varieties to the OT3. Which means that Hardison is a Honeycrisp. Also great for savory dishes, but sweeter than the Fuji or Granny Smith, because Hardison is a sweetheart. These are pretty solidly Good Autumn Baking apples, and you know Hardison always makes me nostalgic for home, just like a perfect apple pie.

Nate I’ll say is a Gala apple. A little basic, inoffensive, pretty tasty but nothing standout. Also, a fair amount of mixed drinks with apple to garnish use Gala apples since they’re not overwhelming. They’re also finicky little fucks, for the record, I know because we use them at work and I swear if you breathe on them they bruise. Which I think is a fair comparison to Nate going off the deep end when the plan doesn’t... you know, go to plan.

It’s apple season in the northern hemisphere! If you’re lucky enough to live in an apple-growing region, you may even be able to get ahold of heirloom apples. These older varieties have fallen out of favor, sometimes because their tree wasn’t robust enough, or they didn’t ship well. Sometimes you don’t find these heirlooms around because they are ugly as sin. Otherwise delicious! But they look like potatoes that were sat on by a bear, or cursed quest items that will transform you into a mushroom. The Apples of New York, published in 1905, lists thousands of heirloom apple varieties, and with these names as a starting point (I collected some modern varieties too, making about 2500 names), I trained a neural network (textgenrnn) to come up with more.

The neural network’s names sound, um... they don’t sound like modern apple varieties. In fact, they sound a lot like they should be riding horses and waving broadswords.

Lady Bold Mage Little Nonsy Red The Braw Lady Fallstone Baldy the Pearmain Spitzenborn Warflush Bogma Red Tomm of Bonesey Lady Of the Light Kentic The Steeler Warrior Golden Pippin Of Bellandfust

The reason, of course, is that most of the dataset is made of pre-1905 apple varieties, and those don’t follow your silly modern naming conventions, all Honey- this and Sweet- that. The Apples of New York lists varieties such as Pig Snout, Peasgood’s Nonesuch, Cornish Gilliflower, Mason’s Improved, Pine Stump, Dark Baldivin, Duck’s Bill, and Greasy Pippin. 

Still, even by “Peasgood’s Nonesuch” standards, some of the neural net names are strange.

Camfer's Braeburg Yerky Severe Pea Golden Red Red  Spug Sten's Ooter Queen Screepser Steep's Red Balober Kulter of Death Orga Starley's Non Pippe Black Rollow Galler’s Baldwilling Bellewan's Seedline Evil Red Janet Baldword Kleevil Svand's Sheepser Bramboney Lady Basters Winey De Wine Cheekes  Gala Wowgwarps Luber Reineautillenova

And there were apple names that were worse. Apples to definitely avoid. Perhaps part of the problem was that my neural net had previously been trained on metal bands.

Fall Of Apple  Ruin Red Sweet 81 English Death Galebury  Knington Pooper  Naw Grime  Rot  Brains Hellbrawk Double Non  Winter Red Spite White Wolves  Winesour  Ruinstrees  Worsen Red Failing Puster  Excreme

And actually okay to get these last few I maaaay have thrown in a bit more training on metal bands:

Dark the Pippin of Merdill Descend The Fujion Seedling Beyond pell of Pippin Spirite Hell Desert Belle King Golden Steel Ancient Bearing Rock Graverella

There were apples that were worse, and I’m definitely blaming those on the metal bands (though I did catch one or two apple names in the original Apples of New York that would raise some eyebrows). Support AI Weirdness and get them as bonus content!