More Historic Apples to Try
Calville de Blanc apples, which date to 1590s France
I love the idea of eating an apple that was eaten by people hundreds of years ago. Was Moliere eating a Calville de Blanc apple, which dates to the late 1500s, when he wrote “The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit”? Was Shakespeare thinking of a Calville de Blanc that had outlasted its prime when he wrote “A goodly apple rotten at the heart” in Merchant of Venice? It’s lovely to imagine that they were. The oddly ribbed green apple splashed with an occasional bit of red was grown in Louis XIII’s gardens at Orleans in 1627 and by Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. And now I’ve got it baked up into a pie in my little kitchen. I enjoy thinking of other women who peeled these bumpy treasures in very different times and circumstances than my own and wondering how they prepared them once the skins were in a heap on the table.
