My wife entered me into a contest to get cosmic Crisp merchandise. They sent me a shirt, dish towel, and a few apples. I was already a rabid fan of the apple. It is tart, sweet, juicy, doesn't brown even after 24 hours of being cut, and is firm enough for baking without being too hard. It is like the Honey Crisp, but stores better and has more flavor IMO. All hail the Cosmic Crisp.
Seriously though. The Red Delicious is disgusting. When I bought my apple trees I asked the nursery employee if anyone ever buys the red delicious trees. Apparently some do, so perhaps those of us that hate the red delicious do so with a passion, while most are just indifferent.
Food is very rooted in memories and childhood. A lot of people who ate Red Delicious as children will feel that same sense of safety and warmth that they did when they ate them as kids. Proust’s Madeleine and all that.
btw, if you ever thought engineers were terrible about naming things, check out Apple cultivars, where you have names like SweeTango™ [0] and Zestar!® [1]
Empire is pretty much the perfect every day apple. Super crisp, firm(no bruising), tart, sweet, and cheap! Every other apple, and I've tried a lot, goes too far down one of those attributes. Granny Smith being the exception for baking, and pairing with caramel.
If you can find them, Rome apples are, IMO, far superior for baking compared to Granny Smith.
[edit]
I should say this is true if you like a tooth to your baked goods. Rome apples are far more firm after being cooked than most breeds (some Jonathan crosses are similarly firm after cooking IIRC)
I’m not entirely sure the red delicious of today is the same fruit it was 40 years ago. I loved them as a kid, now they are pretty gross. Maybe my taste has evolved, but it doesn’t really even look like the same fruit i remember.
That's the point of the article: in the quest for ever greater redness, the companies dominating apple production bred out the taste completely, so now you have mush in a tough, red sack.
The author seems to believe they changed: “But as genes for beauty were favored over those for taste, the skins grew tough and bitter around mushy, sugar-soaked flesh.”
No, the author is not talking about Red Delicious in that sentence. The sentence before talks about Red delicious, and the sentence you quoted talks about later cultivars.
You sure? I’d love it if it were like you say. I imagine a dedication to an authoritative strain. Like champagne or parmigiano reggiano. I heard bananas today are completely unlike bananas of the past.
Sadly, I’m pretty sure Red D ain’t what it used to be. The next sentence:
> But as genes for beauty were favored over those for taste, the skins grew tough and bitter around mushy, sugar-soaked flesh. Still, by the 1980s, the Red Delicious made up 75 percent of the crop
produced in Washington.
> I heard bananas today are completely unlike bananas of the past.
That is because bananas of today is a completely different cultivar of banana. Up until the 1950s the primary type of banana was the Gros Michel. This is also why artificial banana flavor doesn’t taste like bananas we have today. The artificial flavor was originally created when the Gros Michel was what people thought of when they thought of a banana.
I remember eating red deliciouses about 30 years ago and they were terrible, for the exact reasons in the article. It turned me off of apples, to this day, I still mostly eat pears, and shy away from apples.
Basically all fruits and vegetables taste much worse (or, simply, much less) than they used to. Is this some kind of weird market failure, or is it just the only way to produce this stuff at the scale required nowadays?
It's a failure of "eugenics": aggressive artificial selection amplifies trade-offs, and by the time the market picks up on the fact that trade-offs exit (in the case of Red Delicious, mostly having to do with taste of the fruit), consumer tastes shift, and the formerly selected-for traits become very unpopular.
I mean, fruits and veggies were very, very seasonal, save the things we could preserve in different ways. Eggs were seasonal as well. Now with shipping and greenhouses, more of us can have some of the stuff all year.
But only if it ships well enough.
For a lot of things, we've decided that having the thing is better than not. So we get red delicious even where apples don't grow, and maybe you can buy local ones in autumn - you know, the ones that don't ship well. Some fruits you only get frozen or in jams simply because they won't make it to you fresh. And so on.
To make things more complicated, things like apples are strange: An eating apple is a rarity from seed.
It might also be that your taste buds were more sensitive when younger: This is a known thing. It lets you eat a wider variety of foods now, as an adult, but can have the effect of not liking other things.
That's kind of what this article is about..... but to answer your question: it's a market "success", and it's taste.
People do not buy fruit & veg because it tastes very good, they buy it because it exists in a supermarket and looks pretty. Flavor is not a major component in choice. If you have 3 apples, and all 3 taste bland, people will still buy the "best" of the 3 bland apples rather than no apple at all.
Fruit/veg found at a supermarket are also bred for industrial purpose. They are selected to store well, grow quickly, produce in large numbers, resist disease/drought, and be visually pleasing. Flavor is a minor consideration, because 99.99999% of people will not go out of their way to find a better tasting version of the same veg.
If you want tastier fruit/veg, go out of your way to find a local varietal, or a local grower of more varieties. There are thousands of small farms all over the country that grow a wide variety of fruit & veg.
Also, tastes change. The fruit/veg that you prefer may have gone out of fashion, so the new stuff doesn't taste as good to you.
Braeburns are great when in peak season — juicy, crisp, not at all pappy — but in the UK at least they’re highly desirable (edit: I mean they’re a staple, not that people really crave them) and therefore grown or imported year round, despite the fact that for 10 months of the year they’re mealy, bland spheres of disappointment.
So is it just me or are Jazz apples just the mealiest of apples? We get them at our office, and I've tried them multiple times figuring maybe the previous time we just got a bad batch, but every single time it's like taking a bite out of a bag of flour.
Ate a Jazz this morning and it wasn't at all mealy. Office fruit is often terrible, though - you get the oldest and dodgiest leftovers that no consumer would buy for themselves.
Since we're just naming apples now, in the last few months i have really enjoyed Jupiter, Holskin, Golden Melinda, Reveille, and of course the mighty Cox:
I’ve always wondered if there is a way to remove the wax coating before eating an apple. It always seemed to me the wax would just seal in whatever nastiness was in the Apple when it was coated and it would be nice to remove it before eating. Anyone know how to do that without baking it or peeling off the skin?
I actually just use dish soap. I do this with the most of my fruit/veg. Only takes a few moments and washes right off. Of note I do use no scent, fragrance free dish soap.
Great links! I used to use the veggie-wash stuff but switched to soaking in baking soda because it was much cheaper and seemed to achieve the same result. The difference is huge for me, eating grapes used to cause me headaches and upset my stomach if I ate more then a dozen or so, after I started soaking them in baking soda I can eat them by the pound without issue. I don’t know what is on grapes that causes me grief but just washing them doesn’t get rid of it. I do that with everything now except watermelon and bananas. My wife likes to candy orange and lemon peels so I do wash and soak those.
BC has a variety called Ambrosia that has an absolutely delicious bite. My second fav is Honey Crisp and they share some qualities albeit Ambrosia does not have a Honey flavour.
Edit: Apparently, Ambrosia are referred to online as having honey flavour so my taste beds are failing on that metric :)
Ambrosia apples are also grown in the USA (at least in Wisconsin). We bought box this year, along with a box of Snow Sweet and a box of Honey Crisp. 11 people (five kids) are eating them, and as the boxes start to run out, the Honey Crisps are almost gone, with Ambrosia close behind. The Snow Sweet is the least popular. I like them all, but my order of preference follows that of the our (greater) household.
Same here, and good riddance. Prior to their disappearance they weren't even the cheapest apples, gala/fuji had them beat pretty regularly, yet they held on for a couple years.
In high school we used to sell large bags of Washington apples as a band fundraiser. We sold so many we got a full truckload delivered direct. They were so fresh and flavorful. The fresh bag of Red Delicious I ordered were the best apples I've ever had. It's not the point of this story, but fruit you get in the grocery store, often flash frozen and thawed, has a fraction of the flavor it has pulled off the plant. I can't even eat store-bought blueberries after picking them fresh in North Carolina.
Can't agree more. I spent most of my life hating appleas because of those damn beautiful Red Delicious. I honestly didn't understand how anyone could eat them.
Fast forward to my 30s and reading a random forum post about apples, I see people explain how different apples taste, and a ton of recommendations for Honeycrisps.
Boy were they right. An actual delicious apple, which was a gateway drug of sorts to my current favorite fruit, the Pink Lady. Who'd have thunk two similar looking fruits can vary in tastes so wildly.
My favourite apple were Elstar. Why past tense? The were small, had an amazing rich aroma, a slight hint of acidity and were very refreshing. The apples nowadays sold under that name are roughly 50% bigger, colours are the same but the taste is like 20% of the old ones.
An apt comparison would be the small strawberries you have to pick yourself in the woods (or my parents garden) with that intense exploding flavour, compared to those tasteless zeppelins you can buy in shops.
Farmers' market apples taste a lot better than discount grocery store apples of the same variety. I don't know why, and it's not everything--potatoes are potatoes.
I'm surprised more people don't like Golden delicious apples. They tend to get a bit mealy faster than the newer varieties, but when they're in season they're nice and crisp, mild, and not too sweet. They always put Red Delicious to shame.
I call them red yuckies. Apples are seasonal. If you can get them fresh, the better they are. Apples are also put in cold storage which means that the first ones out are the "freshest". People also have different tastes. Some prefer sweeter, mellow apples (like an envy or gala). Others prefer tart (like granny smith or a cosmic crisp). There are so many types that are fun to try.
Kiku, Kanzi, Sweet Tango, Braeburn, Fuji, Ambrosia, Yellow Delicious, Lemonade, Mcintosh, Empire, Gala, Envy, Cosmic Crisp, Ginger Gold, Honeycrisp, Jazz, Macoun, Opal are all examples of good eating apples (in no particular order).
I worked at an apple orchard one year and really liked the Northern Spy apples they grew. I was told they were pie apples, but I never tried baking them.
Red Delicious gets such a bad rap: I swear you can find good ones (in Ontario anyway) that are perfectly sweet and crisp. When they're good, they're probably my second favourite behind the short-season Red Prince. (Which is currently in season in Ontario) The Apple has a weird story behind it too. Discovered in the early 90s in the Netherlands. It's only been in Ontario for a decade or so (?) And has to be cellared for like half the year to get the tartness to a good level.
Also some weird early biz struggles by the company that controls the fruit...
I have no idea if it's regional or what. But when a Red Delicious is good, it's great. So many are that gross mealy mess and I don't think there's any way to tell from the outside.
You're not the only one. I like a lot of apple varieties, and red delicious are firmly on that list, somewhere in the top 5. I always found the hated of red delicious to be a particularly amusing kind of pretentious groupthink. Just forget for a moment what your hipster "apple connoisseur" friend or your favourite foodie podcaster say about them. Forget the hate, actually try them and realize they're actually quite good.
As someone who lives in near Apple orchards (Central Virginia), there is little similarity between the apples sold in supermarkets (largely from the Pacific Northwest, and available year-round), and "real" apples, available for 2-3 months in the fall. Any variety, including Delicious, is far better truly fresh.
84 comments
[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 147 ms ] thread* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granny_Smith
Generally anything that's not-soft.
One of the newest varieties is Cosmic Crisp:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Crisp
* https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50619281
A whole bunch have come out recently it seems:
* https://newengland.com/today/food/the-best-new-apple-varieti...
* https://www.10best.com/interests/food-culture/types-of-apple...
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holsteiner_Cox
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_de_Boskoop
[3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlepsch
Seriously though. The Red Delicious is disgusting. When I bought my apple trees I asked the nursery employee if anyone ever buys the red delicious trees. Apparently some do, so perhaps those of us that hate the red delicious do so with a passion, while most are just indifferent.
[0] https://sweetango.com/ [1] https://mnhardy.umn.edu/varieties/fruit/apples/zestar
I'm sure programming and novel cultivars are not the only places where naming is hard.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14349964
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8300619
[edit]
I should say this is true if you like a tooth to your baked goods. Rome apples are far more firm after being cooked than most breeds (some Jonathan crosses are similarly firm after cooking IIRC)
https://www.orangepippin.com/varieties/apples/empire
But i live in the UK, so i don't see either!
It's likely the Red Delicious of the old days are genetically exactly the same as the Red Delicious of today.
Sadly, I’m pretty sure Red D ain’t what it used to be. The next sentence:
> But as genes for beauty were favored over those for taste, the skins grew tough and bitter around mushy, sugar-soaked flesh. Still, by the 1980s, the Red Delicious made up 75 percent of the crop produced in Washington.
That is because bananas of today is a completely different cultivar of banana. Up until the 1950s the primary type of banana was the Gros Michel. This is also why artificial banana flavor doesn’t taste like bananas we have today. The artificial flavor was originally created when the Gros Michel was what people thought of when they thought of a banana.
You are probably right. 15 new lines (sports) have been patented during past 40 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Delicious#Sports_(mutation...
I mean, fruits and veggies were very, very seasonal, save the things we could preserve in different ways. Eggs were seasonal as well. Now with shipping and greenhouses, more of us can have some of the stuff all year.
But only if it ships well enough.
For a lot of things, we've decided that having the thing is better than not. So we get red delicious even where apples don't grow, and maybe you can buy local ones in autumn - you know, the ones that don't ship well. Some fruits you only get frozen or in jams simply because they won't make it to you fresh. And so on.
To make things more complicated, things like apples are strange: An eating apple is a rarity from seed.
It might also be that your taste buds were more sensitive when younger: This is a known thing. It lets you eat a wider variety of foods now, as an adult, but can have the effect of not liking other things.
People do not buy fruit & veg because it tastes very good, they buy it because it exists in a supermarket and looks pretty. Flavor is not a major component in choice. If you have 3 apples, and all 3 taste bland, people will still buy the "best" of the 3 bland apples rather than no apple at all.
Fruit/veg found at a supermarket are also bred for industrial purpose. They are selected to store well, grow quickly, produce in large numbers, resist disease/drought, and be visually pleasing. Flavor is a minor consideration, because 99.99999% of people will not go out of their way to find a better tasting version of the same veg.
If you want tastier fruit/veg, go out of your way to find a local varietal, or a local grower of more varieties. There are thousands of small farms all over the country that grow a wide variety of fruit & veg.
Also, tastes change. The fruit/veg that you prefer may have gone out of fashion, so the new stuff doesn't taste as good to you.
Actually there was a legal fight between the Ag tech startup Phytelligence who raised nearly $23 million and Washington State University over it.
https://www.geekwire.com/2019/agriculture-tech-startup-phyte...
https://www.orangepippin.com/varieties/apples/coxs-orange-pi...
but there seem to be many ways to do it, usually with a solution of white vinegar or baking soda:
https://www.healthyfoodhouse.com/how-to-make-homemade-apple-...
https://afarmgirlinthemaking.com/removing-wax-from-fruit-usi...
Edit: Apparently, Ambrosia are referred to online as having honey flavour so my taste beds are failing on that metric :)
Fast forward to my 30s and reading a random forum post about apples, I see people explain how different apples taste, and a ton of recommendations for Honeycrisps.
Boy were they right. An actual delicious apple, which was a gateway drug of sorts to my current favorite fruit, the Pink Lady. Who'd have thunk two similar looking fruits can vary in tastes so wildly.
An apt comparison would be the small strawberries you have to pick yourself in the woods (or my parents garden) with that intense exploding flavour, compared to those tasteless zeppelins you can buy in shops.
Kiku, Kanzi, Sweet Tango, Braeburn, Fuji, Ambrosia, Yellow Delicious, Lemonade, Mcintosh, Empire, Gala, Envy, Cosmic Crisp, Ginger Gold, Honeycrisp, Jazz, Macoun, Opal are all examples of good eating apples (in no particular order).
Go to an orchard that has Courtland apples and try them fresh off the tree.
Fuji, Gala, Macoun, Macintosh — well, I tried most of the list, they all are worth a try.
Also some weird early biz struggles by the company that controls the fruit...
https://financialpost.com/commodities/agriculture/the-red-pr... (2015)