[Sca-cooks] Historical Apples

Gretchen Beck grm at andrew.cmu.edu
Sun Oct 26 10:31:18 PDT 2008


Gravenstein's perhaps?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravenstein>

I've never seen these in stores in my area (although perhaps I'm just not
looking), but the wikipedia suggests they are popular in Nova Scotia. 

toodles, margaret 

--On Sunday, October 26, 2008 10:17 AM -0700 Lilinah
<lilinah at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Apples are so common... and yet... i know that many of the varieties most
> commonly found in the supermarket are fairly recent hybrids. And i have
> trouble finding many of the apples i remember from 40 years ago. I've
> read that modern apples are being bred to be sweeter and sweeter,
> although we can still find some tart apples in the supermarket.
> 
> This curiosity was brought on by a recent cooking competition in which a
> couple judges were complaining that an entrant had not use period apples,
> as if we can find them in the supermarket.
> 
> I cannot grow my own trees in my second floor apartment, but if someone
> has land, here's a great source of historical fruiting plants (not just
> apples)
> http://www.treesofantiquity.com/
> Trees of Antiquity sells all sorts of amazing fruit trees, they even have
> a few SCA-period apples, which is something one can't find in the
> supermarket. Here are trees they carry (no, they do not sell fruit, only
> trees)
> The earliest trees i saw listed are:
> WHITE PEARMAIN - England 1200 A.D. - Oldest known English Apple.
> CALVILLE BLANC - France 1598 -  gourmet culinary apple of France...
> SUMMER RAMBO - France 1535 (Rambour Franc) - Large red fruit, bright
> striped. Breaking, crisp, exceptionally...
> LADY (Christmas Apple, Api) - France 1600 - Traditionally used in
> Christmas decorations and...
> COURT PENDU PLAT - Europe 1613 (probably Roman) - The name is derived
> from Corps Pendu, referring to the shortness...
> API ETOILE (Star Lady) - Switzerland 1600's - Very unusual oblate
> (flattened) shape looking like a rounded...
> ROXBURY RUSSET - Massachusetts prior to 1649 - Excellent old American
> cider apple, a keeper and good for eating...
> RHODE ISLAND GREENING - Rhode Island 1650 - Favorite American cooking
> apple known in earliest colonial...
> CALVILLE ROUGE D'AUTOMNE - France 1670 - Large, with characteristic
> ribbed Calville shape.
> 
> There's more info on line for all of them...
> 
> And, yes, i read the Florilegium file, apples-msg. The link above is to
> growers who have replaced the Sonoma Antique Apple Nursery, which is no
> longer. The URL for SAAN is now a placeholder only and has nothing about
> fruit trees on it.
> 
> So, what varieties are available today (without growing one's own) that
> are period or close to period? Are Pippins as close as we can get? (crab
> apples are an awful lot of work for a feast)





More information about the Sca-cooks mailing list