The Awful Reign of the Red Delicious | Hacker News Reader

The Awful Reign of the Red Delicious

theatlantic.com

172 pointsnormanlee142 comments

Good riddance. Red delicious apples get mealy fast, sometimes before you buy them. I kept waiting for the article to acknowledge this, and the closest it came was "tastes have sifted." Bah, who has ever liked a mealy apple? Gala, Fuji, and especially Braeburn stay crisp and tasty longer.

Strangely, yellow delicious stays good despite getting softer. It doesn't get mealy, just softer, and it's still great to eat.

You pretty summed up why I hate Red Delicious.

Has the apple itself changed? I don't remember the modern frustration with mealy red delicious apples when I was a kid - I loved them back then. Is modern shipping or farming rougher now?

The article features expert insight into why this might have happened, in case you missed it:

Noting the 1980s as when it all started to go down hill: "But as genes for beauty were favored over those for taste, the skins grew tough and bitter around mushy, sugar-soaked flesh."

Just like Strawberries...

And Tomatoes... Though fortunately that is finally being rectified.

I started growing strawberries at home. The first homegrown berry that I tasted was like fireworks going off in my brain.

Yeah. When did they get so sour? Ever bought blackberrys at the store? Same thing. Thankfully, I can pick those in my backyard.

Unfortunately the author (and perhaps others) are confused. This variety is the same, genetically, now as it was 40 years ago.

They're all propagated from cuttings, hence they are genetically identical. Which means the skins are the same as they were before, and the flesh as is bitter (or otherwise) as it was before, etc.

If they weren't, they wouldn't be called the same name, as evinced by many other 'modern' varieties, that are crosses or hybrids of (other) known apple varieties.

> They're all propagated from cuttings, hence they are genetically identical. Which means the skins are the same as they were before, and the flesh as is bitter (or otherwise) as it was before, etc.

No, it actually doesn't mean that. First, genetics aren't the only determinants of those features; environmental factors, growing, shipping, and storage conditions, etc., all play a role.

Second, propagation by cutting doesn't mean they are genetically identical, because mutations still occur and are an important source of variability, and not all of them result in different branding.

I'm not sure how old you are, but I'm 33 and remember hating red delicious since elementary school because they were mealy. So by the late 80s, at least, the mealiness had set in.

36 and the same. I specifically remember thinking that apples from the harvest out in the country were mana from god and only available on a farm in autumn. Then one day Braeburn showed up in the supermarket, and since then I have never become visually aware a Red Delicious in the same way that none of us here see banner ads.

I generally don't eat apples at all because I'm not a fan of Red Delicious. Although I have had other apples on occasion, in my mind all apples = not my fruit of choice. Reading this though maybe I need to go buy some varieties and try them out.

Ditto.

AFAIK apple varieties don't change over time, because the same genes are used over and over by grafting the trees instead of growing from seed. This is because seedlings produce wildly different characteristics from their parents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple#Breeding

I think this is the closest it gets:

> But as genes for beauty were favored over those for taste, the skins grew tough and bitter around mushy, sugar-soaked flesh.

I didn't know fruits were bred - I thought all Red Delicious were grafts of identical genetic stock?

They are bred, but you're also correct that any given variety is all grafted from one original tree. Apples can be bred by cross pollinating varieties, planting the seeds, and then taking scions from the sprout and grafting them onto mature trees (sometimes with dozens of varieties of apple grafted to the same rootstock) so that they yield fruit faster. I think it's typical to go through about 1000 seedlings before you find a good apple for fresh eating (many more are good for cider though).

You can also just plant the seeds and let them grow naturally, but it takes a lot longer to get any kind of results (not to mention more space).

I'm just getting started on this process at my farm actually (apples, pears, asian pears, and cherries so far, seedlings are growing, but I haven't grafted scions yet). It's a major exercise in long-term record keeping.

Here's an example of a tree with a lot of varieties grafted to it, though this guy isn't doing it for breeding purposes: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2437247/250-varietie...

Here's a wikipedia article that mentions the grafting process for testing new hybrids: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grafting

They bred them until they developed red delicious. Once they got it, they graft it onto rootstock.

When you say yellow delicious do you mean golden delicious? From my experience those are great fresh, but once they've gotten pretty soft then they become bland. Sometimes they'll retain sweetness but if so it doesn't last for very long.

Red delicious are actually quite good right after they are picked.

Perhaps the reason why we don't like Red delicious is the 'paradox of choice'. 40 years ago, there were perhaps 4 varieties of apples on average in a grocery store, today perhaps 9 or 10. Perhaps with the sweeter, crispier apples brought by advances in Agri-tech the Red Delicious has become lackluster in comparison.

How is this a paradox of choice? As in how is it paradoxical that when better alternatives exist people prefer them?

It is not a paradox; it is perhaps irony if those same people would prefer non-agri-tech fruit if you ask them (which, totally gut-reaction-based, I suspect is the case).

But many traditional varieties are much nicer than the Red Delicious... I've never eaten one right off a tree, but the R.D.s that make it into stores seem to be pretty bland and "one-dimensional" (purely sweet, no noticeable sourness or other tastes), and often have a sort of nasty bitter tasting skin.

[I notice that Fuji apples are a R.D. cross from the 1930s... But Fuji are vastly tastier (and more attractive!)...]

This doesn't sound right, but perhaps you are in an atypical part of the world.

40 years ago you would, I expect, find a larger variety of apples, most of them heirloom (ie. open pollinated, with a history you could trace back several hundred years, and were free to propagate at home) at the 'average grocery store'.

Now you'll typically find a selection of apple varieties that were bred relatively recently, selected for shipping and long storage life (ie. ability to retain colour, sweetness (not necessarily flavour), resistance to bruising, consistent colour and shape, russets are eschewed as they're not currently popular, etc).

To the east of London, UK, there's a (somewhat) government-run farm at Faversham, where they are maintaining a mighty collection of apples - somewhere around 2,500 distinct varieties. They also maintain around 700 cherry, and 500 pears, amongst other fruits ... many of which they can trace back several hundred years.

Complaining about just one apple variety seems to be totally missing the point - you can most certainly find, with some small effort, an apple that perfectly suits your idea of the perfect specimen.

As an American who's almost 40 and remembers grocery shopping with my mom as a young child, there were typically only three common apple varieties available: red delicious, golden/yellow delicious, and granny smith. That's it.

Nowadays, even at my crappy Food Lion, I can find those three, plus usually 2-3 additional. At local higher end groceries, I can find 8-10.

At my local farmers' market, I can find 20-30 (when they're in season).

My personal favorites are Honeycrisp, Jonagold, and Pink Lady, but since Jonagolds aren't common in my state and Honeycrisps are a restricted patent and very expensive, we usually buy gala, fuji, and sometimes braeburn.

40 years ago was 1974, which was already decades deep into the homogenization of of the (American) grocery shopping experience.

Forty years ago was 1974, hardly the zenith of heirloom varieties. Maybe what you write was true 80 or 100 years ago.

Mealy - I didn't know there was a word for that taste - http://www.thekitchn.com/food-science-what-makes-apples-9570...

Perhaps the etymology of the word will help with the connection to the taste. In Dutch (another Germanic language) mealy = 'melig', which is close to 'meel' (: flour). There you have the connection to the sawdust-taste. Sawdust and flour, i think, taste pretty much the same.

Or for that matter, the English word cornmeal.

In German it's "mehlig", and it's exactly the adjective to "Mehl" (flour).

But I wouldn't call it a taste, it's texture: "how it feels in the mouth".

Although this state goes hand in hand with a stale taste.

It's more a texture than a taste.

"Red delicious apples get mealy fast, sometimes before you buy them."

Wait, you mean it's possible for them to not be mealy?

Yes.

They're ok straight from the tree. Still not my favorite by a long shot, but ok.

Basically nobody gets 'em straight from the tree, though. I live in an apple-growing state, and all the Red Delicious apples in the supermarket still come from Washington, 2,000 miles away.

We have Boskoop apples in our garden, which I love! They are sour and great to cook with. And you can keep forever in your basement.

Golden Delicious can also get mealy, but quality varies a lot. As a kid, they were my favourite apple, but as I got older, they got softer and more mealy. Or maybe they were always mealy I only started noticing it then.

I don't buy them anymore. When I buy apples (which is rarely), I usually get either Jonagold (cheap and good enough), or Gala or Braeburn when I want something better.

Apples!

For a while a couple of years back I was an Apple geek (the fruit, not the computer).

It's good to see that the Gala, Braeburn and Fuji apples have already been mentioned.

If you can find them, Jazz apples[1] are a must-try. They are a cross between the Gala and the Braeburn, and the most amazingly crisp apple I've ever tried. I think the flavour isn't quite as good as a Gala, but that crispness is the complete opposite of the Red Delicious.

They are good looking apples, too.

The Pink Lady apple is also a good one. I think that might have my favorite flavour.

http://www.orangepippin.com/ is a good place to learn about the varities available.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_(apple)

> The Pink Lady apple is also a good one. I think that might have my favorite flavour.

Also my favorite!

Yes, I second the Jazz recommendation. They are as good as, if not better than, Honeycrisp, and usually cheaper. SweeTango was supposed to rival Honeycrisp, but never lived up to the expectation, IMO.

I dunno about you - when I first tasted it, I thought SweeTango was like Honeycrisp on steroids. Although I fully concede that my reaction could have been like the folks in the study where they showed people rate more expensive wines higher than the cheaper ones.

Honeycrisp is overrated imo. They are too sweet.

As a connoisseur of Minnesotan apples, I've always thought the SweeTango was a perfect iteration on the HoneyCrisp. Both are good though.

If you like slightly tart ones, you need to find a Prairie Spy. One of the first U of MN varieties, never sold in stores.

A fellow apple geek! (for me, the fruit and the computer)

I whole-heartedly agree on the Jazz apple! My current grocery store consistently has them in stock (which wasn't true of my prior one) so I'm a very happy camper.

Thanks for the Orange Pippin link. Going to check that out!

Another variety resource:

http://www.mercier-orchards.com/apple-varieties/

Another interesting thing is how the size of the apple affects the flavor. My local super market sells two sizes of Fuji apples, 'Large' and 'Lunchbox'. For whatever reason, the large ones have exponentially better flavor than the smaller ones.

Have you tried Envy? The ones I've gotten this year have been a great combination (for me) of crispness and great flavor.

I absolutely love Envy apples!

They are very crisp and sweet without the tart flavor other crisp varieties seem to have. They also don't go brown after cutting for a very long time.

Definitely worth the slightly higher price in the supermarket. I very much miss them when they are out of season.

Pink Lady (which I've just now learned is a brand name, and the variety is called Cripps Pink) was my favorite for a while, but I've just discovered Envy. Great stuff, I have one with breakfast every morning.

Now if the pears could be just as good.

Pink lady is an incredibly sufficient baking apple, but for raw flavor and texture (and admittedly there's some home town pride here), nothing has ever eclipsed a proper sized Honeycrisp for me.

Eve is another must-try in my book. I haven't seen them outside of New Zealand yet though.

http://www.loveapples.co.nz/new-zealand/our-apples/eve/

Ambrosia is pretty good too.

If you are in or near Portland, they do there is an annual apple tasting event:

http://portlandnursery.com/events/appletasting.shtml

Jazz apples are my favorite. Not in stock often. But I always get them when they are.

A village just outside Oxford (UK) has a communal apple orchard (http://www.oxfordpreservation.org.uk/land/wolvercoteorchard....)

They have over 30 varieties, many of which are very old and unusual. I'm a lover of crisp, tart apples, and they had one, sort of a cross between a Bramley and a Cox, which was one of the finest apples I have ever eaten.

Their annual Apple Day is coming up. Sunday 5 October 2-4:40pm

Here's a funny one if you like apples, from a number of years ago when we lived in Austria:

http://blog.therealitaly.com/2007/10/22/arnolds-apples/

Russet FTW

Pink Lady isn't an apple variety - it's just a product trademark. I think most Pink Ladies are actually Cripps Pinks.

And Kiwi Fruit is a Chinese Gooseberry!

You might like this article about "branded apples", like the Pink Lady. That's a branded trademark, not a variety. (I like them too.)

http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21580468-britains-appe...

I read the article, and I don't see where it says that Pink Lady isn't a variety. It mentions the marketing that Pink Lady is sold under, but I don't see where it contradicts the assumption that Pink Lady is a variety of apple. Just marketed and subjected to a certain quality standard.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cripps_Pink

the Pink Lady is of the Cripps Pink variety. I suppose a lawyer would say a "Pink Lady brand Cripps Pink apple" :-)

Ah, I understand now. I read your original comment as "Pink Lady is a bunch of different kinds of apples, all under one label".

Yeah, and Jazz is a trademarked name too.

I don't really see a reason I should care.

> For a while a couple of years back I was an Apple geek (the fruit, not the computer).

You can make this clear by not capitalizing "apple" in this case.

Huge fan of the Pink Lady/Cripps Pink, not crazy about Jazz, Fuji are borderline tasteless IMO.

Worth noting that the Orange Pippin site takes it's name from the Cox Orange Pippin variety.

The Cox is an incredible apple that seems to grow well in England.

http://www.orangepippin.com/apples/coxs-orange-pippin

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/8381396/Why-Coxs-wil...

Even deep in Iris Murdoch's "The Sea, The Sea" you'll find the Cox being praised by the lead character for being a prince of apples, and putting all others in the shadows.

And very soon, it's Cox season again. What a delight.

I like apples. What a strange thing to say!

Interesting, and I think it reflects a broader culinary trend in the US: people are waking up to good food.

As a kid in the late 80ies, in a medium sized town in Oregon, real Italian ingredients were not to be had for love or money, even if my parents even knew what they were. Now, when I go home to visit, they have real Italian cheeses, prosciutto, and even some mozzarella flown in from Italy. Local copycats (my Italian friends all get a kick out of "Oregonzola") are also on the rise, which is a good thing in terms of bringing down the prices and increasing availability to a wider swath of people.

My wife and I have discussed a few ideas for food companies that we might be able to start in the US.

I don't understand why every time I read an article that has something to do with apples the writer bashes on red delicious apples and acts like people are being manipulated into eating them. I love apples and I eat a large variety of them, and though I don't get red delicious the majority of the time, they are still really good and are a good goto apple because they are so consistent. I love how they are crisp, that they have a thick skin, and that they aren't overly sweet or sour. Plus, they are really cheap and are often good sized. Varieties like honey crisps can be tasty, but they can be quite a bit more money and they are often so sweet that it's almost like a dessert.

Speaking only for myself, the red delicious takes up valuable market real estate that could better be used by some other variety of apple not resembling fresh styrofoam dunked in sugar water--I resent the red delicious for its combination of prominent place, flashy looks, nondescript flavor, and repugnant texture.

The red delicious stands apart for its extreme crispness, and to those sensitive to it, biting in is like nails on a chalkboard. Also, it seems like one chew releases all the moisture, leaving a mouthful of dry bleh-ness with which to contend.

Absolutely... giant red apples with a vinyl-like skin and mushy interior, so highly polished and waxed that a chance reflection can blind you.

I call them ASOs (Apple-Shaped Objects)... and IMHO the only place they belong is in Snow White ;-)

Be fair. Most grocery store fruit is a gamble - you know that going in. But Red Delicious, properly ripe and picked at the right time, can live up to its name. A perfect one is really, really good.

I live in an area that grows a lot of apples - in fact the Honeycrisp was developed only a few miles from my home. But I don't think I've ever seen a locally grown Red Delicious. As a kid I fell for the storyline "they're delicious", but as I got older I realized just how poor those ones from the supermarket are. I avoid them at all costs now.

Seems like Red Delicious is the Comic Sans of apples: a ubiquitous flavor that everyone loves to hate!

I would compare it to Georgia. Why does every (well most) news website use Georgia?!! As if there is a dearth of newer beautiful looking fonts.

red delicious in sfbay area have been uniformly mealy or mushy. My favorite fruit is apples and I can still barely eat them. I think people are just unhappy lots of grocery stores stock only red/golden delicious with maybe a granny smith, or at least primarily red delicious. Plus the name offends...

> I don't understand why every time I read an article that has something to do with apples the writer bashes on red delicious apples

Well, clearly you like Red Delicious apples. And that's fine, I'm not knocking you for that. But I don't think that's a majority opinion. As a result, most articles about apples are written by people who really dislike Red Delicious apples.

You have...unusual taste for someone who loves apples and "eats a lot of them". May I humbly suggest you try a few varieties further afield.

Go pick apples that grow near you! You don't have to go to a farm to do this in a lot of places.

We pick apples all around Atlanta (and donate them to local food banks) and they are super interesting -- Apple trees that are grown from a seed (a "pippin") will produce an apple that has never before existed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple#Cultivation), so we get lots of strange varieties from the fruits we pick around town : large, potato-shaped apples that are just dripping with juice but almost tasteless. Golf-ball sized apples that are green-skinned but pink-fleshed. Super delicious ("grocery store quality") apples with strange skin patterns and lots in between. There's tons of fun stuff to find out there.

Curious for my own sake, do you just pick from random trees you find? Do you worry about property rights at all, or is this on public land?

As a kid in the 1970's living in New Zealand most of our local apples (NZ grows a lot of apples) were green. Imported Red Delicious used to sit in the supermarket looking so red and beautiful and screaming to be purchased, which occasionally I could get my mother to do. I don't remember them being floury, but they were always sweeter than the green apples - a real memory of childhood.

But now in comparison to Gala, Fuji, Braeburn and others, Red Delicious seem floury, the skin is too thick and the flavour no where near as crisp and clean as the other varieties. There's also a lack of airmiles on most of these as we grow them here.

35 years on I don't think my kids have had a Red Delicious, and certainly not something I will miss if I never have another one.

Honeycrisp apples are amazing. If you've never had one before you're in for a big surprise.

They are really hard to find... almost as if they are seasonal or something!

They are great apples, but they're also about 3x as expensive as Red Delicious apples (at least where I am in the US).

You'd have to pay me to eat a Red Delicious if Honeycrisp is in season.

Honeycrisp are amazing. So are Jazz, if you can find them. Our local grocer has many interesting kinds. Also, read Michael Pollan's "The Botany of Desire" for a more in-depth treatment of apple biodiversity vs. the market forces.

Too sweet. Braeburn all the way.

I saw a fascinating documentary about apples last year. It traces the back the roots of all apple races to Kazachstan, where the film maker finds a botanical garden with ancient races. Unfortunately, nothing is documented there.

It's in dutch, but the images are beautiful, too: http://www.npo.nl/fresco-s-paradijs-2/20-10-2013/VPWON_11752...

Interesting read for sure, but it's just like any other product. Things that are nice looking, cheap, and plentiful will always be consumed by the mass market, even if it's lower quality. "Good enough" rules the market for nearly every product out there, at least in the number of units sold. Why would apples be any different?

"Two buck Chuck" wine is the top selling wine year after year, but it's nowhere near the best. I consider Red Delicious "good enough" apples, and they're plentiful. Fiji and Honeycrisp will be my choice when they're available, but that isn't always the case.

American mass-produced fruits are in general disgusting. They are tasteless and watery. Strawberries are probably the worst offenders. In Ukraine, strawberries are very sweet and much smaller. The American strawberries just seem full of water.

I've long had a joke theory that every fruit produces a certain fixed amount of flavor, and the bigger you breed it to be, the more watered down it gets. Sure, this is biological gibberish, but for a joke theory, it does seem to fit most of the facts.

On a less jokey note, I have found myself wondering how much gene engineering it would take to fix the mismatch between size and flavor.

I mean, you're not totally wrong... Fruits like strawberries prioritize the localization of their sugars towards the outside of the fruit -- where the seeds are (The opposite is true for thick-rinded fruits like melons). Whole-fruit sweetness/flavor though is more determined by the soil composition than the size of the fruit.

You're not that far off from the truth.

Typically the fruit of the plant contains a lot of chemical energy in the form of sugars. Plants that have been selectively bred for hardiness (thicker skin, longer ripening periods, etc.) expend more on those traits as opposed to making more chemical energy in the fruit.

And that is probably much closer to the real reason. (And I'm saying "probably" just to hedge since I don't truly know, but it seems very likely to me.)

But I sort of get a kick out of imagining a meta-physical level of "flavor per fruit" out there in the world.

Incidentally, part of what I wonder about gene engineering is whether we could keep most of the hardiness, etc, and focus very tightly on putting in more flavor compounds, instead of using the blunt stick of breeding and getting who knows what other characteristics correlated in with that. Of course it won't be free to the plant but we might still have some room for optimizing.

I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one. I come from the "Apple Capital of the World" and it's all about local fruit. We ship out our fruit everywhere in the world, and it's not going to be anywhere near as good when it gets to you as it was when I ate it. We make the best apples hands down, but nothing compares to your local fruit if you are fortunate enough to have good orchards.

Basically what I'm getting at is that American fruit that's taken care of on the way to your mouth is great. If your local fruit tastes like this, then it's just not good fruit.

The problem is with early picking and forced ripening to allow longer selling distances and better shelf life. I agree with you completely, too. I live in an ag-heavy southern state and the local produce we get is as good as any I've had anywhere. I actually live next door to a strawberry farm and we take the kids to pick them a few times every spring. :)

Well if you shop at a mass market grocery store then you are probably getting the mass produced fruit.

But if you go to a farmers market or a fruit stand, changes are you are getting fruit from local farms. At least this is the case where I live.

Also there are tons of varieties of Strawberries perhaps the ones where you live are different. Fragaria vesca looks like a strain popular around Europe that looks very different from the American variety.

http://strawberryplants.org/2010/05/strawberry-varieties/

> American mass-produced fruits are in general disgusting.

When it comes to tropical fruits it is the same: American bananas taste like Styrofoam, guavas are bland.

I agree about some tropical fruits (mangoes and durians especially), but I've had bananas straight off the tree in Southeast Asia and they really didn't taste any different to me.

Bananas are an exception because they are actually best picked green and allowed to ripen off the tree. I don't recall what goes wrong if you don't. This makes them the rare fruit that is perfectly happy with industrial production and shipping.

Another such exception is avocados: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avocado#Harvest_and_postharvest (second paragraph under Harvest and Postharvest)

And for the same reason: they've been bred for shippability and shelf appeal, not for taste.

Vote with your wallet. Lots of variety has been lost forever because old breeds haven't been cultivated anymore.

There is an initiative here in Europe that tries to keep old true-to-seed breeds alive but they have to fight the brutal lobbying of Monsanto and the likes.

In the end it is our fault when we buy stuff for the wrong reasons (cheaper is better, looks, etc).

Arche Noah:

"In the past 100 years we have lost about 75 percent of agricultural diversity worldwide."

"Beginning of the (20th) century there were 2,000 apple varieties, today you can find at the grocery store only max. 20 varieties."

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...

Fun fact: these days Joe Cocker cultivates old tomato breeds on his farm in Colorado and gets some of his seeds from the Arche Noah network.

Yeah I grew some 'heirloom tomatoes'. Small, bad color, flavorless. They hybrid them for a reason.

> "Beginning of the (20th) century there were 2,000 apple varieties, today you can find at the grocery store only max. 20 varieties."

Not that I disagree with the point, but I take issue with statements like this one, which can be true yet completely misleading.

How many varieties were available in grocery stores in the beginning of the 20th century? How many apple varieties exist now?

I suppose you're comparing apples to apples, but not in the way that that phrase is supposed to mean :)

If you eat the peel, Red Delicious has the highest level of antioxidants / polyphenols of the apples tested. Not all apples commonly available were in the lineup though, like Gala.

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf0346298

There's a great BBC documentary called "Apples: British to the Core" [1] which has a very nice look into the history of apples, how they were cultivated, and how classic varieties are becoming lost. Everything leads back to the Cox Orange Pippin.

I live in Europe now, and enjoy a wide variety of interesting regional apples. Whenever I return to the USA I'm disappointed by the selection and quality of apples available. Red and green. They look nice, but often are waxy and bland.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUAJ0F1oH-M

Must depend on where you are. See this:

http://portlandnursery.com/events/appletasting.shtml

If they can procure 60 varieties, then it's definitely not at "US" thing.

I've always wondered why at almost every event where large quantities of apples are given out, there's always Red Delicious. I see them and just keep moving on. Really interesting (and unfortunate) story of them.

I'm curious if there are any early generation Red Delicious apple trees left or if they've all become offspring of the selective breeding. I'd like to taste one.

A few years ago I started seeking out good-tasting apples and kept a spreadsheet to track my reviews. If you can get your hands on Jazz or Pacific Rose apples, they are amazing!

I have to say I love Red Delicious apples when they are fresh. They are the worst for shelf life so you need to be careful, but I will take one at its freshest over any other variety I have tasted.

Here's a tip: try to find a large supermarket that caters to Asian customers to buy your apples. The Buford Highway Farmer's Market here in Atlanta has a great selection. They carry most of the varieties mentioned on this thread.

Another thing. Buy in season to get the best quality. Apple picking season is the fall. As a bonus, you'll notice the price drop significantly when the crop comes in.

>At the supermarket near his home in central Virginia, Tom Burford likes to loiter by the display of Red Delicious. He waits until he spots a store manager. Then he picks up one of the glossy apples and, with a flourish, scrapes his fingernail into the wax: T-O-M.

>“We can’t sell that now,” the manager protests.

>To which Burford replies, in his soft Piedmont drawl: “That’s my point.”

You're kidding, right?

I'll take a Spartan or nice n sour McIntosh any day over a mushy bruisy oversweet red "delicious".

I live in arguably the best place in the US for good produce (near Berkeley Bowl and the gourmet ghetto), and I must say, I haven't had a good McIntosh apple in years. Either they are just not around or they just don't taste like the fantastic apples of 10-15 years ago.

Red Delicious were responsible for me hating apples as a kid. McIntosh were responsible for me starting to love them again.

Good McIntosh are pretty common in NJ. I just couldn't seem to find them year round. I wonder why that is.

40 years ago red delicious were small with firm flesh and a great taste and even better refrigerated. They were also uncommon and perhaps more expensive than the locally grown McIntosh.

Now... red delicious are usually mealy and blandly sweet.

I really miss those oh so delicious apples of my youth.

I remember when red delicious we're small and crisp. At some point, they got gigantic and mealy. So gross. I hope my favorite apples don't go down the same path... Braeburns seem to be getting bigger and bigger...

You still can't beat wild apples though. Way better/complex flavor profile than bland/uniform store ones.

For anyone that lives in the UK and loves apples, I would recommend the Apple Festival held at Brogdale, near Faversham in Kent [1]. Brogdale is the home of the UK's National Fruit Collection [2] and if you've ever wanted to have 30-40 varieties of apples and pears to taste and buy like a wine-tasting this is the place to be.

[1] http://www.applefestivalkent.co.uk/search/label/Theapples [2] http://www.nationalfruitcollection.org.uk/

I remember growing up on red delicious in the 80s and 90s (my sis preferred Granny Smith, so we had both at home). The day in the mid 90s my dad brought home some new apples (Fuji and gala) was revelating. After that I could never enjoy red delicious as much. I don't think I've willingly bought a red delicious in ages.

If you've never tried it, manzano bananas are great too. They are tiny little bananas that have a distinct apple flavor mixed in.

I've never understood why Red Delicious were so popular. Now that I've been living down the street from an orchard in upstate NY, I understand even less. Orchards really seem to push Fuji around here- they seem to grow more of them than anything else. I've always really like macs, and my wife got me into macouns which are pretty similar.

Interesting read. I've always found Gala and Fuji too soft and lacking the crispness of a Red Delicious. I have never been able to stand them. I can't abide non-crisp apples.

I find the best apple for crispness and taste is the Cameo, followed by Granny Smithes. Red Deliciouses still hold 3rd place when it come apple taste and crispness for me.

Interesting; while I agree with your ideals, I find they lead me to the opposite conclusion. Red delicious were never crisp enough, compared to Gala which are consistently crisp, and for a lot longer.

I've found that both Gala and Fuji vary heavily according to the time of year. If I get them 'in season' [1], they're crisp and delicious. If I get them out of season, they can be quite soft/floury.

It's been a long time since I had a soft Pink Lady though.

[1] I put that in quotes because I'm not sure whose season. I'm an Aussie, and we can get them year round, so I figure we must be importing at some point. As such, this may be a regional thing.

Arkansas Black is one of my favorites. Not very common and usually only found later in the season, but they keep for months.

This. I came to talk up AB. For some weird reason, when I bite into them, I get a hint of cardamom. They're my favorite by far.

A half century ago and more, A.J. Liebling complained of the popularity of the red delicious "which doesn't taste like an apple, and the yellow delicious, which doesn't taste like anything." (Quoted from memory--I haven't seen my copy of Between Meals in a long time.)

The New Yorker had a fantastic article on the commercial side of developing new species of apples a couple of years ago: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/11/21/crunch

The Red Delicious is a terrible apple. Waxy and mushy and watery.

Try a Worcester Pearmain if you get a chance.

Braeburns and Granny Smiths are the only apples we ever buy (sometimes substitute Gala or Jazz for the Braeburns, if we can't find them). I've literally never eaten a deep red apple I liked, and I am a big apple eater. (UK)

This article confused the hell out of me. Since I don't eat apples but my kids love them, I have purposely tried all the kinds of apples at the store. And time and time again my kids prefer Red Delicious.

This is maybe not inconsistent. Kids like Kraft macaroni and cheese and Hotdogs covered in ketchup. We shouldn't expect kids to like "better" foods if they haven't developed a palette yet.

Marketing?

My kids nag me to buy "cheese product" which is like cheese but 10x the price (OK I'm exaggerating, it's 5x - cheese is already the most expensive single item of food we buy), tastes like plastic and is marketed in a kid-friendly way.

Might be related to the childhood preference for sweet foods - apparently Red Delicious has high amounts of sugar, relative to other apple varieties. For example, 14.8% sugar for "Early Red" variety[1], vs 10.4% average over all kinds[2]. Maybe this is enough to explain it?

[1]. http://www.researchgate.net/publication/49591548_Composition...

[2]. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+apple

When I buy a red delicious down in the SV, it's fantastic.

I can't find a decent apple (of any variety) in SF. Granny, gala, delicious, golden, they're all mealy and either overly sweet or tasteless.

What's the problem?

The Cox (Cox's Orange Pippin): sharp and crisp like an autumn morning.

After reading the article, I still don't get what he was proving by scratching his initials into them in front of a grocery store manager.

I've had lots of different kinds of apples. I like Red Delicious apples the best. Is there something wrong with me?

The same thing has happened to pears (used to be hundreds of varieties widely grown) and pork, which veered dangerously close to the color, texture, and flavor of Styrofoam in the 90s before they started breeding some of the tasty genes back in from the vestigial show pigs. Thank god for the 4-H breeders.

The red delicious is a metaphor for the U$D. This is the work of Bolsheviks advocating flight from the dollar toward a new reserve currency, concealed as harmless information. Eden's door is Exit Only. Run from this serpent.

It's clear this capitalism thing isn't working. New national mandate: all products to be sold in identical opaque boxes. Marketing is outlawed and the only allowed form of advertising is hiring Sam Waterston to dispassionately read off the results of independent double blind studies your product has been involved in.

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