Cooking apple

Bramley apples
Red Gravenstein apples
Yellow Gravenstein
Baked apple with vanilla sauce

A cooking apple is an apple that is used primarily for cooking rather than eating raw. Cooking apples are larger, and can be tarter than eating varieties. Some varieties have a firm flesh that does not break down much when cooked. The British grow a large range of apples specifically for cooking, but such varieties are used worldwide, although apples eaten raw are also used for cooking purposes. Many apples are dual-purpose.

Apples can be cooked down into sauce, apple butter or fruit preserves, baked in an oven and served with custard, and made into pies or apple crumble. In the UK apples are commonly boiled and mashed and served as apple sauce with roast pork. Bramley apple is by far the most popular cooking apple in the UK.

A baked apple is one that has been baked in an oven until it has become soft. The core is usually removed and often stuffed with other fruits, brown sugar, raisins, or cinnamon.

John Claudius Loudon wrote in 1842[1]

Properties of a good apple — Apples for table are characterised by a firm pulp, elevated, poignant flavour, regular form, and beautiful colouring; those for kitchen use by the property of falling as it is technically termed, or forming in general a pulpy mass of equal consistency when baked or boiled, and by a large size. Some sorts of apples have the property of falling when green, as the Keswick, Carlisle, Hawthornden, and other codlins; and some only after being ripe, as the russet tribes. Those which have this property when green are particularly valuable for affording sauces to geese early in the season, and for succeeding the gooseberry in tarts.

Eating raw

It is often believed that eating cooking apples raw will make a person sick. In reality cooking apples are harmless raw and are just varieties of apples whose characteristics are well suited to cooking. This myth is simply a product of cooking apples' tart taste and the possibility of it not sitting well in the stomach.

Cooking apple cultivars

See also

References

  1. ↑ Loudon, J.C. (1842), The Suburban Horticulturist; Or, an Attempt to Teach the Science and Practice of the Culture and Management of the Kitchen, Fruit, and Forcing Garden to Those who Have Had No Previous Knowledge Or Practice in These Departments of Gardening, London: William Smith, p. 529
  2. ↑ Robert Hogg: The Fruit Manual.... 2nd ed. (London: 1862). Retrieved 22 February 2016.
  3. ↑ Fertig, Judith M. (2011). Prairie Home Cooking. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 69. ISBN 1558325824.
  4. 1 2 Thomas, Harry Higgott (1902). The Book of the Apple. J. Lane. p. 71.
  5. ↑ Mulvihill, Mary (2003). Ingenious Ireland. Simon and Schuster. p. 135. ISBN 0684020947.
  6. ↑ DK Publishing (contributor) (2012). Cooking Season by Season. Penguin. p. 335. ISBN 1465405186.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Platt, Rutherford (2014). 1001 Questions Answered About Trees. Courier Dover Publications. p. 169. ISBN 048616781X.
  8. ↑ Weathers, John (1901). A Practical Guide to Garden Plants. Longmans, Green. pp. 1056–1059.
  9. ↑ Knox County Farm Bureau Bulletin. The Bureau. 1922. p. 6.
  10. ↑ Gordon, Don. Growing Fruit in the Upper Midwest. U of Minnesota Press. p. 47. ISBN 1452901066.

External links

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