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Red delicious apples weren’t always horrible

newengland.com

81–90 of 257 posts

Re: Red delicious apples weren’t always horrible

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I had always assumed that unsold food gets thrown away (or maybe at a best case donated), and supply chains for bakeries etc are 100% separate by design.

The local supermarket sells whole roasted chickens that you can buy hot and ready to eat. The ones that don't sell are deboned and shredded and used for chicken salad, barbeque "pulled" chicken, etc.

And these roasted chickens were previously on the shelves as raw whole chicken that was pulled and cooked when they hit their “sell by” date.

Re: Red delicious apples weren’t always horrible

#82
post #2

> “It turns out that a lot of the genes that coded for the flavor-producing compounds were on the same chromosomes as the genes for the yellow striped skin,” Traverso explains, “so as you favored the more consistently colored apples, you were essentially disfavoring the same genes that coded for great flavor. This is also why so many cultivars of tomato and cucumber taste like moist cardboard. Once you taste what the…

Nearly nobody under the age of 35 is aware that popcorn used to taste like corn. Not like modern ears of corn, which are bred mostly for sweetness; more like tortilla chips, whose corn is still (somehow) cultivated for corn flavor. Corny. [edit] … also I’m baffled by how, every time I “hold the tomatoes” on my burger or salad, someone will invariably say “don’t you like tomatoes?” and I have to go on this dumb rant a…

I always thought tomatoes were pretty good and then I had tomatoes in Europe.

Re: Red delicious apples weren’t always horrible

#83
post #71

As a kid, I was a fan of Golden Delicious, while others criticised it for being too mealy. That wasn't my experience, at least at first. Eventually I encountered increasingly mealy Golden "Delicious", and started favouring other apples. Even the cheapest apples here, like Elstar and Jonagold, are pretty good in comparison. I wonder if it's the fate of any breed to eventually be bred for looks instead of taste. If you…

Sometimes you can go by smell! Produce that smells good also often tastes good.

I also have some luck going by looks, but by specifically looking for exemplars that have flawed looks (in ways that I know don't negatively affect flavour). For types of produce where you can sort of tell which ones are good, other people tend to go for the ones that look good but also don't have blemishes. That selection process results in the good ones being statistically overrepresented among the ones with flawed looks.

Re: Red delicious apples weren’t always horrible

#85
post #27
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but it also sucks because so many people say 'i dont like apples', including me until my mid 20s. Red Delicious are awful in every metric. Once a friend opened my eyes to pink ladies and honeycrisps, I was blown away and felt..cheated somehow.

Have you tried a Cosmic Crisp? A truly superior apple. Although its ability never to oxidize and turn brown feels downright unnatural. You can leave a cut cosmic crisp on the counter for days and it just stays yellowy white. Weird. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Crisp

I think Cosmic Crisp vs Honeycrisp mainly comes down to taste. I vastly prefer Honeycrisp, but I also don't like sour much.

The sourness of Cosmic Crisp is probably why it doesn't oxidize readily.

Re: Red delicious apples weren’t always horrible

#87
post #2

> “It turns out that a lot of the genes that coded for the flavor-producing compounds were on the same chromosomes as the genes for the yellow striped skin,” Traverso explains, “so as you favored the more consistently colored apples, you were essentially disfavoring the same genes that coded for great flavor. This is also why so many cultivars of tomato and cucumber taste like moist cardboard. Once you taste what the…

Nearly nobody under the age of 35 is aware that popcorn used to taste like corn. Not like modern ears of corn, which are bred mostly for sweetness; more like tortilla chips, whose corn is still (somehow) cultivated for corn flavor. Corny. [edit] … also I’m baffled by how, every time I “hold the tomatoes” on my burger or salad, someone will invariably say “don’t you like tomatoes?” and I have to go on this dumb rant a…

you would probably love the dorito effect https://www.amazon.com/Dorito-Effect-Surprising-Truth-Flavor...

Its a book about the incentives and technologies that came together to result in the deflavorization of food and the rise of the "flavoring" industry as a whole.

Of the interesting things in there is one guy using a mass spectrometer to identify flavor compounds at scale to engineer a tomato that is hardy and ships well without sacrificing flavor.

Re: Red delicious apples weren’t always horrible

#88
post #78
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

San marzanos are pretty good … oops I shouldn’t have said that … now the words out and the geneticists are working hard to screw them up too

San Marzanos are origin-protected in Italy, so if you get Italian San Marzano's they're legally limited in ways that promote quality. Unfortunately, there is a large black market in mis-labeled San Marzanos, so it's not a full guarantee of quality. But it's something that they're at least working on, rather than just giving up.

>> San Marzanos are origin-protected in Italy

What does that mean? Protected under what laws?

Re: Red delicious apples weren’t always horrible

#89
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i too stopped ordering tomatos for this reason some people mentioned looking for places that advertise using heirloom tomatos, but you still have to give them a good pinch of salt would love to join a startup that re-engineers flavor back into commercially-viable crops

Just move to Europe.

Sorry to tell you tomatoes are flavourless in Europe as well.

Re: Red delicious apples weren’t always horrible

#90
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i too stopped ordering tomatos for this reason some people mentioned looking for places that advertise using heirloom tomatos, but you still have to give them a good pinch of salt would love to join a startup that re-engineers flavor back into commercially-viable crops

Just move to Europe.

Most tomatoes here suck as well.
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