Hacker News Reader

Comment by jimbob45 | Hacker News Reader

I guess I’m out of the loop. What’s with the Red Delicious hate?

My wife and I used to drive around aimlessly when I was in grad school and she was just starting her career as a doctor. We found that it was a good way to relax, and we sometimes discovered fun local gems when we did this.

One weekend we stumbled on a local apple orchard doing a cider making demonstration. We were the only people there so the orchardist (he called himself a “pomoculturist”) personally showed us around, picking an occasional apple, telling us about it, and then encouraging us to take a bite.

At one point he picked a deeply dark purple, almost black, apple and handed it to me. “Black Oxford” The flavor was intense: acidic, sweet, floral. Then another, dark red and fragrant. “Winesap” Then “Belle de Boskoop”. And on and on.

None of these apples are sold commercially except at small scale directly from orchards. The flavors, appearances, and aromas of apples is truly astonishing. So I think that’s why Red Delicious gets all the hate. The world of apples is amazing and huge.

I prefer to see Red Delicious as yet another miracle of apple genetics, just one that I don’t personally care for. But if you have the opportunity to visit an heirloom orchard, please do.

For me, it was a life-changing event: I now have a small heirloom orchard of my own.

It's mealy, bitter, and has a thick unpleasant skin. Many articles call it "the worst apple in the world." Decades of engineering it for transportability at the cost of taste and edibility are to blame.

But the U.S. has created new, much better apples, like Cosmic Crisp (2020)

Honeycrisp is still the king, and afaik farmers hate growing it.

I've read that Honeycrisp is difficult to grow, that's probably why.

Cosmic Crisp is much easier to grow, at least in the climate it was developed for/in. Those 2 varieties are somewhat similar, although I find Honeycrisp a bit more subtle in flavor and enjoyable, while Cosmic Crisp has just a strong sweet/tart flavor.

>"Honeycrisp " - it was my love until it was not. over the years the taste and texture have completely changed

My understanding is that demand killed the Honeycrisp. When it first came out, it was very delicate and could only be grown in certain places. But it was a perfect apple- crisp and sweet and bursting with flavor. So everyone who tasted one loved it and wanted more.

And so the food scientists went to work, and figured out how to cross-breed in the ability to grow in a wider variety of places. And adding in the capability to grow in large numbers like the Red Delicious turned the Honeycrisp into an apple that tasted more like the Red Delicious.

The US is really amazingly good at growing food, but it is because the physical reality- not just transportation but growing conditions- trumps taste in the main.

Are there any rules about labeling that can distinguish the old and new Honeycrisps?

Edit: https://www.seriouseats.com/how-honeycrisp-apples-went-from-...

Based on this a big problem is overlong storage, which could be avoided with some effort into local purchasing.

My advice, as someone who grew up regularly apple-picking, for going local is to prefer the types that are local versus the names that you recognize from the supermarket. Unless you are in exactly the right area (upper Midwest), you will be much better off with the best apples for your region then with a locally grown Honeycrisp.

In upstate New York, I would recommend Autumn Crisp, Blondee, Macoun and Shizuka. I haven't picked apples in Virginia in about a decade, so I'm probably out of date on the right types to get there, but I remember loving Stayman apples.

smdh even my apples are getting enshittified

I've enjoyed listening to dozens of talks by Alan Watts, who is a pretty chill guy until he comes across the subject of red delicious apples. Never heard him curse about any other subject.

It's mealy, tastes pasty and bland with no flavor. Honeycrisp so much better tasting and texture! Red delicious were bred to have a dark red outside and look like a classic "apple" while sacrificing the apple flavor inside.

The original Red Delicious wasn’t even bred, but was just a chance seedling found by chance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Delicious

No idea if this is still true of what is currently sold under the name. All apple verities are clones so the they should be (mostly) the same but the verity is old enough to not have anyone protecting the name.

Normal Apple trees will have wildly different flavors on even individual branches.

Specific varietals are from cloning specific branches widely, but at some point it often gets ‘lost’ due to natural imperfect cloning.

Red Delicious is not a pure clone of the original. Random genetic mutations have happens over the years and those were cloned. Normal breeding has more genetic variation but clones get some

I am somehow in the "I like Red Delicious" camp. Perhaps because I was used to Kashmiri apples, that apparently share the cultivar roots of red delicious. Never liked the more acidic varieties. Actually like the "mealy" texture - (it feels grainy to me)

https://applerankings.com/red-delicious-apple-review/

This site is good fun, thanks.

The Red Delicious has been optimized for the growers, packers, and grocery stores, and not the consumer. The priorities are thick skin so they can be roughly handled, and bright red because they believed that's what would make people purchase them. "Cosmic Crisp" is their answer to the Honeycrisp, by trying to tweak the Red Delicious instead of abandoning it. I see it as the equivalent of "a faster horse" dilemma.

In my family they’ve always been known as “those apples that look pretty on the shelf at the supermarket but taste like cardboard and aren’t even good for cooking”. We’ll all opt for just about any other cultivar if given the choice.

Well, they kind of suck these days, at least compared to how we remember they used to taste.

Who know if they are actually the same, plain genetic drift, or they have been selected to be more shelf stable at the cost of taste.

I remember Red Delicious being kinda gross in the early 90s. Bitter and cardboardy.

However, it seems there are multiple things with that name. I've had one that looked different and tasted... less bad.

No. They kept trying to push it over here.

It was always grim, bitter, but "oh so pretty".

While the red delicious are a good usually-large American apple that ships easily the newer varieties are much tastier.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com