Apple crisp made with Seek No Further apples

A Final Batch of Antique Apples

For the last time this season, I’m back with an edition of American Apple. I’ve got four antique varieties of apple to share with you this week, but not a lot of information. With the exception of Golden Russet, I seem to have chosen three less well known apples: Rosemary Russet, Red Cortland, and Westfield Seek No Further.

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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.

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Turns out I’m not the only person obsessed by apples this time of year. In fact, my obsession is rather mild compared to that of Dan Bussey of Edgerton, Wisconsin. In addition to managing a four-acre orchard with 250 apple trees, he’s written a book describing 14,000 varieties of apples.

According to an article published in the October 17 edition of the Wisconsin State Journal, Bussey’s book “will become the definitive guide to apples in North America, a unique resource and the first comprehensive guide to apples in more than 100 years.”

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