All About APPLES
Apple trees are especially hard and are probably the most widely distributed fruit trees on the planet. There are 35 species in the genus MALUS. The species that gives us most of our eating apples, Malus x domestica, seems to have originated in the mountains of Kazakhstan from crossings of an Asian species, Malus sieversii with several cousins. The domesticated apples spread very early throughout the Middle East, and introduced to the Mediterranean region by the time of the Greek epics and the Romans then introduced it to the rest of Europe. These days apple production is an international enterprise, with southern hemisphere countries supplementing northern stored apples during the off-season, and common varieties as likely to have come from Asia.
Cider Apples
Mainly of the European native Malus sylvestris are high acid fruits in astringent tannin, qualities that help control alcoholic fermentation and clarify the liquid. Tannin cross-link between protein and cell wall particles and cause them to precipitate. They are almost only used in cider making.
Dessert/Eating Apples
Crisp and juicy with a pleasing balance between sour and sweet when eaten raw with pH 3.4, 15% sugar, it becomes relatively bland when cooked. Most of the apples available in supermarkets and produce markets are dessert apples.Cooking Apples
Distinctly tart when raw with a pH +- 3, +-12% sugar, are well balanced when cooked. They have a firm flesh that tends to maintain its structure when heated in pies or tarts, rather than falling immediately into a puree or as in some early codling varieties into a fluffy froth. Many countries had their standard cooking apples.
In France, Caville blanc d'hiver. England, Bramley's Seedling. Germany, Glockemapfel.
Dual-purpose Apples
Adequate either raw or cooked like the Golden Delicious and Granny Smith. These are usually at their best for cooking when young and tart and best for eating when older and mellow.
An apple's potential for cooking can be tested by wrapping a few slices in aluminium foil and baking in a hot oven for 15 minutes, or microwaving (or as i like to say in my kitchen, NUKE'IN !) a few slices wrapped in plastic films until the film balloons with steam.
Great Apple Dishes from Amazing Chefs.
Insalata A Voce; Green Apple, Marcona, Almonds, Pecorino
by Andrew Carmellini, A Voce, New York City.
Apple and Eggplant Croute with Apple Butter, Lemon Poached Apple
by Dominique & Cindy Duby, Wild Sweets, Vancouver.
Poached Granny Smith, Wild Flower Honey and Belgian Endive
by Thomas Keller, The French Laundry, California.
Caramelized Apple Sunday with Butter Pecan Ice Cream
by Emily Luchetti, Farallon, San Francisco.
Apple Flavours
Apple varieties can have very distinctive flavors, and these evolves even after the fruit are picked from the tree. The English we great connoisseurs a century ago.
"By storing apples properly in a cool place and tasting them periodically, the apple lover could catch the volatile esters at their maximum development, and the acids and sugars at their most graceful balance".-Edward Bunyand
Apples become more mellow with time because they consume most of their malic acid for energy. Much of their aroma comes from the skin, where volatile-creating enzymes are concentrated. The distinctive aroma of cooked apple pulp come largely from a floral-smelling fragment of the carotenoid pigments, damascenone.
Many fruits owe their characteristic aroma to chemicals called ESTERS which is a combination of two other molecules ACID and ALCOHOL. A typical plant cell maintains many different kinds of acids and several different kinds of alcohol.
ethyl alcohol + acetic acid = ethyl acetate , a characteristic note in apples.
The acids may be either tart substances in the cell fluids or vacuole-acetic acid, cinnamic acid, or fatty acid portions of oil molecules and the molecules that make up cell membrane; hexonic acid, butyric acid.
The alcohols are usually by-products of cell metabolism. Fruits have enzymes that join these basic cell material into aromatic esters. A single fruit tree will emit many esters, but one or two account for most of its characteristic aroma.
Apple Air and Texture
Apples differ from pears in having as much as a quarter of their volume occupied by air, thanks to open spaces between cells in the fruit. Pears are less than 5% Air.
The Air spaces contribute to typical mealiness of an overripe apple: as the cell walls soften and the cell interiors dry out, biting into the apple simply pushes the largely separated cells apart from each other rather than breaking the cells and releasing pent-up juices.
Air cells become a factor in baking whole apples; they fill with steam and expand as the apple cooks, and the skin will split unless a strip is removed from the top to release the pressure.
Apples and Crab-apples are good sources of cell wall pectin and make excellent jellies. For the same reason, a simple puree of apples has a thick satisfying consistency when briefly cooked into an apple sauce or slowly reduced to apple butter.
Apple Juice and Cider
Apple juice can be either opalescent or clear depending on whether is pectins and proteins are left intact to deflect light rays. Made Freshly, it will stay pale and retain its flesh flavor for about an hour, after which the darkening and aroma-modifying influences of enzymes and oxygen becomes evident.
Browning can be minimized by heating the juice rapidly to the boil to inactivate the browning enzymes but of course, this will contribute to a cook flavor for the juice.
Pasteurized apple juice was first manufactured in the Switzerland, and is now one of the most important commercial fruit products in the United States.
Cider is still and important product in northwest Spain, western France and England, where the traditional method was to let the fruit pulp ferment slowly through the cold winter, reaching an alcohol content around 4%.
Browning can be minimized by heating the juice rapidly to the boil to inactivate the browning enzymes but of course, this will contribute to a cook flavor for the juice.
Pasteurized apple juice was first manufactured in the Switzerland, and is now one of the most important commercial fruit products in the United States.
Cider is still and important product in northwest Spain, western France and England, where the traditional method was to let the fruit pulp ferment slowly through the cold winter, reaching an alcohol content around 4%.
Some Distinctive Apple Flavours Varieties and Pairing
Flavor
- Simple, Refreshing - Gravenstein, Granny Smith
- Strawberry, Rasberry - Northern Spy, Spitzenburg
- Winey - McIntosh (Well Matured)
- Aromatic, Flowery - Cox's Orange, Ribston Pippins
- Honey - Golden Delicious ( Well Matured), Fuji, Gala
- Anise, Tarragon - Ellison's Orange, Fenouillet
- Pineapple - Newtown Pippin, Ananas Reinette
- Banana - Dodds
- Nutty - Blenheim Orange
- Nutmeg - D'Arcy Spice
Flavor Pairing Affinities
- Apple + Almond + Caramel
- Apple + Almond + Armagnac + Créme Fraíce
- Apple + Apricot + Pine Nut + Rosemary
- Apple + Calvados + Cranberry + Mapple
- Apple + Caramel + Cinnamon + Dates + Lemon Confit + Quince + Vanilla
- Apple + Celery + Walnut
- Apple + Cinnamon + Cranberries
- Apple + Ginger + Hazelnut + Lemon
- Apple + Honey + Thyme
- Apple + Raisin + Rum
- Apple + Red Cabbage + Cinnamon
- Apple + Yam + Dark Chocolate
"If you cook apples on top of the stove, some varieties will have a lot of juice while other will have non at all, Fuji, Gala, Golden Delicious tend to be juicy while Granny Smith are often drier. With different types of apples, you often cant predict the outcome. If i am serving Gingerbread and Apple, i will sauté them in a little sugar to see what happens, if it is letting out a bunch of juice, i wont add sugar, if they are dry, I'll add some apple juice or calvados" - Emily LUCHETTI, Farallon, San Francisco
"We smoke the oysters with apple-wood and serve it with a puree of apple and juniper that just plays beautifully off the oyster" - Katsuya Fukushima, Minibar, Washington DC
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