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Red delicious apples weren’t always horrible

newengland.com

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Re: Red delicious apples weren’t always horrible

#231

Post by fatnoah »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #180
jareklupinski wrote: post #67

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

I've actually thought about this before. AFAICT, it's mostly a supply chain issue. In order to ship fruit long distance, they're harvested before they're ready, and artificially ripened in frozen containers. This lets them survive long journeys but kills a lot of the taste. So your company would end up being a traceability and logistics one - what's the nearest place to your customers that grow fruit, how can you pro…

I lived in a city and had a roofdeck with full sun all day. Tomatos grew amazingly well up there, and the flavor of those ripe tomatoes was so amazing that we had them with nearly every meal. It also made buying tomatos from the grocery store totally impossible.

Re: Red delicious apples weren’t always horrible

#232

Post by AlanYx »

fatnoah wrote: post #231
LAC-Tech wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've actually thought about this before. AFAICT, it's mostly a supply chain issue. In order to ship fruit long distance, they're harvested before they're ready, and artificially ripened in frozen containers. This lets them survive long journeys but kills a lot of the taste. So your company would end up being a traceability and logistics one - what's the nearest place to your customers that grow fruit, how can you pro…

I lived in a city and had a roofdeck with full sun all day. Tomatos grew amazingly well up there, and the flavor of those ripe tomatoes was so amazing that we had them with nearly every meal. It also made buying tomatos from the grocery store totally impossible.

I've noticed that full sun makes a surprisingly big difference, even with the naturally good tasting heirloom varieties (Cherokee purple, Brandywine, etc.).

I wonder what the science there is. You'd think the slower ripening in partial shade (often a week or more slower) would result in a more complex tasting tomato, but perhaps the flavor compounds never reach a critical mass.

Re: Red delicious apples weren’t always horrible

#233

Post by ragingrobot »

sumtechguy wrote: post #130
dgan wrote: post #86

I absolutely love apples, and those Red Delicious are quite delicious No idea what the article is complaining about

Wonder if it is a regional thing? Maybe there are several varieties of red delicious? But they all get the same name? In the area I live in now they are fairly bland and do not taste very good. But when I was a kid we would goto nebraska city and get a couple of bushels of them and those were very good otherwise we would not have bought that many.

Most likely.

If I go to the local produce market here in central NJ, when it's apple season they sell the local apples (in fact this particular market has it's own apple orchard).

If you hold a Red Delicious from Washington State and one from Jew Jersey, they are obviously different in shape. The Washington apple tends to be the boxy, tapered apple we're familiar with. The NJ Red Delicious is a globe, looking more like a Honeycrisp or Winesap in shape with the coloring of a Red Delicious. The NJ has a sweeter (although not significanty so) taste unlike the bland Washington (and others).

Re: Red delicious apples weren’t always horrible

#234

Post by philwelch »

gbuk2013 wrote: post #217
dagw wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know how "champagne" is technically only champagne if the grapes are from the Champagne region of France Unless you live in Russia :) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57733684

> French producers are still allowed to use the word champagne on the front of bottles, but the use of "shampanskoye" is allowed only on local produce.

Exactly. Russian sparkling wine is called "shampanskoye", not "champagne" ;)

Re: Red delicious apples weren’t always horrible

#235

Post by cultofmetatron »

hvidgaard wrote: post #208
cultofmetatron wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 shi…

Do you happen to know what this variety is called?

I wish! in the book, the guy has created it and was giving samples to farmers. However, despite the vastly superior flavor, it wasn't quite as productive as the flavorless ones yet.

Re: Red delicious apples weren’t always horrible

#236

Post by Tagbert »

jader201 wrote: post #166

I used to love apples. Until I realized that most of the ones I would buy ended up being mealy. It was like rolling dice as to whether one would be mealy. Maybe it’s because we started buying organic? We got some apples one time that weren’t organic, and they were great. If organic apples are too susceptible to being mealy, I guess I’d rather just eat other organic fruits vs. eating non-organic apples.

A mealy texture usually means that apple is old and was not recently picked. Some varieties, like the red delicious of this article were bred to not get mealy as they age but at a cost. There is nothing specific about organic that would make the apples mealy but if they were varieties not bred for long life or if they were slow sellers due to price, you might get a high percentage of mealy apples.

Re: Red delicious apples weren’t always horrible

#237

Post by Tagbert »

gowan wrote: post #153

imo the granny smith is the all time worse apple. always taste like a green apple (not trying to be ironic) and usually has a thick skin. just plain terrible might as well pick any apple variety before it is ripe. if you want a good green apple buy a newtown pippin.

I use the Granny Smith for cooking but not as an eating apple. They have a good texture and tartness for pies and apple sauce but they are not what i would want to eat raw.

Re: Red delicious apples weren’t always horrible

#238

Post by GcVmvNhBsU »

dunham wrote: post #120
cudgy wrote: 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

There are some counterfeit San Marzano out there too. Out on the west coast, I've been pretty happy with Muir Glen tomatoes.

Not to say you shouldn’t like Muir Glen, but this seems like the most appropriate place in this thread to drop this link: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/best-canned-tomatoes...

Re: Red delicious apples weren’t always horrible

#239

Post by Vrondi »

kook_throwaway wrote: post #141
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thought I was the weirdo for thinking tomatoes on burgers didn't add any flavor. I love flavorful tomatoes everywhere else, generally, but the kind used on burgers are like mushy water.

Try again sometime on a homemade burger with a homegrown or farmers market heirloom tomato! Divine.

Re: Red delicious apples weren’t always horrible

#240

Post by Vrondi »

hoseja wrote: post #201
watwut wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. You have to grow own tomatoes to have good ones. Which is something only few people are willing and have option to do.

Except the available seeds are probably decreasing in quality as well.

No, there are places dedicated to preserving and making available heirloom seeds.

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange: https://www.southernexposure.com/

Seed Savers Exchange https://www.seedsavers.org/

Open Source Seed Initiative partners with multiple seed exchanges: https://osseeds.org/

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