“If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.” Carl Sagan
Henry David Thoreau once wrote that “it is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.” Michael Pollan
from Orang1na on flickr
It’s apple season. My family ushered in the Jewish New Year last weekend by dipping apples in honey with a blessing for fruit trees, renewal and a good, sweet year. I thought of a cookbook, written by women in Theresienstadt, the Czech concentration camp.
Fighting hunger and malnutrition, the women wrote down the recipes they remembered, an act of defiance that created a cultural legacy. One of the women, Mina Pachter, gave the recipes to a friend on Yom Kippur in 1944, just before she died. The recipes were published in the 1996 book, In Memory’s Kitchen. 65 years later, I’m looking at a recipe for apple dumplings (below).
Alan Turing, a mathematician and cryptographer, is considered to be the father of modern computer science. Turing was also gay, and in 1952 he was prosecuted by the British government for the “crime” of homosexuality. Instead of going to prison, he agreed to be injected with estrogen to “curb his libido.” In 1954, at the age of 41, he committed suicide by eating an apple laced with cyanide. Turing was persecuted for his desires.
Apples, Pollan writes, satisfy our desire for sweetness. “…sweetness has proved to be a force in evolution. By encasing their seeds in sugary and nutritious flesh, fruiting plants, such as the apple hit on an ingenious way of exploiting the mammalian sweet tooth: in exchange for fructose, the animals provide the seeds with transportation…Desire, then, is built into the very nature and purpose of fruit.” (The Botany of Desire)
Decio, which dates back to Roman times, is the oldest known variety of apple. Cox’s Orange Pippin, introduced in England in 1825, is my absolute favorite apple; I’ve found it in Michigan at Christmas Cove Farm.
Stats from the Lansing State Journal’s Interactive Guide to Michigan Apples:
- Pounds of apples the average U.S. consumer eats in a year: 46.1 (at 5-6 ounces per apple, that’s about 138 apples per person)
- Top apple producing states: Washington, New York, Michigan, California, Pennsylvania and Virginia
- Number of family-run apple farms in Michigan: 950
No post on apples would be complete, of course, without a simple and fabulous recipe:
Apples with honey and salted butter – from Larousse Gastronomique
- Preheat the oven to 475 degrees.
- Peel, halve and core 8 dessert apples.
- Pour 3/4 cup liquid acacia honey into a flameproof baking dish, spreading it evenly.
- Place this dish over a brisk heat and arrange the apple halves in the dish with their curved sides underneath and a small knob of salted butter in each.
- Cook for 10 minutes and serve immediately.
From the women of Theresienstadt: Apple Dumplings
Make an ordinary dumpling dough with 1/2 kilogram flour, 2 eggs, 1/2 decagram yeast some fat. Now cut fine delicate apples into small pieces. To prevent them from darkening, pour some white wine over apples. When the dough is kneaded, add apples and make ordinary dumplings. Serve with stewed prunes. It is a good supper.
