Stalking the old-time apples.

Until recently, an apple was just an apple for me. That was before I started ranging the hills and hollows with my friend Theron, who was raised in the mountain tradition of self-sufficiency, and who is still in touch with much of the old-time wisdom and ways. After a couple of seasons of seeing apples through Theron's eyes, I felt like someone who had been shown a rainbow in full color after seeing only black and white.

The fact is, There's an incredible variety of apples in this country and by biting into a few of these old-time apples, we can tap the richness of a rapidly disappearing culture and lifestyle.

When I asked Theron how many types of apples he knew, he rattled off a list of more than twenty varieties. Just the names of these almost-forgotten breeds left my mind reeling with delight. Some were named for what they resembled, like the elongated, lopsided Sheep's Nose apple, the oval Crow's Egg, and the yellow Bellflower. Others took people's names, presumably the ones who developed the variety or who first brought it into the area. So there's Stark Apples, Betsy Deatons, Black Hoovers, Striped Ben Davises, and Ducketts. Still others, like the Winesap, Sweet Russet, Stripey, and Spice apples are named for their distinctive tastes or color patterns or both. The Spitzbergen and the Virgina Beauty refer to their places of origin; the Horse apple is so big and sour that it is considered fit only as feed for horses; the Umbertwig was named for the distinctive shape and flexible limbs of the parent tree. And who knows how the Leatherman, the Milam, the Democrat, and the Knotley Pea got their names. Many of the apple varieties I mention here are found only in a particular area, perhaps as small as a portion of a county.

One of the great proponents of preserving the many varieties of apples was L. H. Bailey. His book The Apple Tree, published in 1922, lamented that to the more than eight hundred varieties listed in the nurseryman's catalogs in 1892, not more than a hundred were available at the time of his writing.

"Why do we need so many kinds of apples?" Mr. Bailey asked. "Because there are so many folks," he said. "A person has a right to gratify his legitimate tastes. If he wants twenty or forty kinds of apples for his personal use, running from Early Harvest to Roxbury Russet, he should be accorded the privilege. There is merit in variety itself. It provides more contacts with life, and leads away from uniformity and monotony. (1)

I'm afraid Mr. Bailey would be less than pleased with our present state of affairs, where monotony and uniformity are encouraged in our corporate society and "shelf life" has more priority than "contacts with life."

In traditional rural communities, people developed an appreciation for a variety of apples because apples were used in so many ways. In the old day's, apples were more than an occasional treat; they were a staple food. From the planning of the home orchard to the drying of apple slices, every way possible was used to extend the apple season and preserve the fruit. In the absence of modern refrigeration, various kinds of apples came to be known not only for their taste but also for their rate of ripening and their capacity for preservation. Each apple had, and still has, its specific season and purpose. Some apples are early apples and some are better late in the season. Some are for drying, some are best suited for sauce, while others are best for canning. There are juicy ones for cider and hard ones for storing and, of course, there are good old eating apples.

During the season, some of the local favorite old-time eating apples are Crow's Eggs Bellflowers, Black Hoovers, and Virginia Beauties. The small yellow Spice Apples actually have a distinctive wintergreen-mint flavor Some eating apples will keep for mouths, while others might be right for eating only for a few weeks of the season. Theron showed me a little apple called a Stripey. Early in the season the apple has a crisp, tangy., white flesh, but if it gets too ripe, or if you let it sit around the house for even a few days, its crispness turns mealy. "It'll almost choke you," says Theron of its sawdust-like texture. As delicious as this short-lived morsel is fresh from the tree, you'll never find it in the supermarket.

Sauce apples and canning apples each have different properties; they aren't just labeled as cooking apples. Good canning apples are firm-fruited and won't turn brown while a whole pan full is being peeled and sliced. The shoes hold their shape as they are exposed to the rigors of home canning. Some good canning apples are Winter Johns, Pippins, Milams, Sweet Russets, Knotley Peas, and Spitzbergens. Although it is possible to make sauce out of almost any apple, the best have a soft texture that will break down with little cooking; Bellflowers and Stripeys are ideal for sauce making. Juicy apples like Winesaps and Sheep's Nose lend themselves well to cider making. Pippins and Crow's Eggs are favorite pie apples. The large Striped Ben Davis is a favorite baking apple.

Good canning apples are also good drying apples because of their firm flesh. Apple drying was an important home industry in many parts of the southern Appalachian. Itinerant merchants traveled the backcountry buying or trading dried apples. Theron tells of peeling and slicing basket after basket of apples, which were dried on racks over the cookstove. In some areas, the apples were cored and sliced into rings, which were dried by stringing the slices on a pole.

Drying is one of the simplest and, if you have a wood stove, one of the most efficient ways to preserve apples. Just slice the apples thinly and spread them on window screens (preferably nylon) suspended a few feet above your wood stove or other heat source. The drying usually takes three days to a week. During warm, dry, weather apples can be sun-dried, but they must be taken inside every night to protect them from the dew. Traditionally, people who were preparing apples for the market peeled them to make a more refined product. However this is not necessary, especially if the apples have not been sprayed.

The art of preserving fresh eating apples nowadays has been relegated to the realm of horticultural science and refrigeration engineering. Modern storage houses are vapor sealed and have massive refrigeration systems that maintain a constant temperature of 31 degrees Fahrenheit and a relative humidity of at least 85 percent. However, the old-time methods of storing apples are still worth knowing, not only because they may be useful to those who might like to store a few bushels of apples for home use, but also because they demonstrate a creative relationship with the environment and a sensitivity to nature that is disappearing from our modern world.

DRIED APPLE STACK CAKE

[Craving Doug's (and Theron's grandmother's) forgiveness, I have
edited the recipe to be a bit less fattening for our readers.--Ed.]

On Christmas and other special occasions, Theron's grandmother
would make what she called "Dried apple stack cake." In
order to experience this cake firsthand, I presented Theron's
wife Doris with three cups of dried apples and asked if I could
watch her make it. first she assembled the ingredients:

6-8 cups of sifted self-rising flour
    in a large bowl
1/2 cup butter or oil
2   eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk or other milk
1   cup sorghum molasses
1   cup brown sugar
1   tsp. salt
1   tsp. ginger
1/2 tsp. cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice

She warmed the molasses, added the brown sugar, the buttermilk,
salt ginger, and beaten eggs and blended them together.
She poured this well-mixed liquid into the center of a bowl of
flour. She then mixed these together with her hands, using a
circular kneading motion, the way she usually makes biscuits.
Next she rolled the dough out until it was one-quarter inch
thick, and cut it to fit the bottom of a nine-or ten-inch frying
pan, then baked it for about ten minutes at 375 degrees. Out of
the oven, it was lightly browned and had risen to a thickness of
approximately three-quarters of an inch. This was to be one of
the layers of the cake. She baked four of these.

While the cakes were in the oven, she cooked the dried apples
with a little water, cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg, mashing
them until they were the consistency of lumpy applesauce. She
spread the cooled sauce between the layers of the cake and
placed a generous ladleful on top. The only fault I could find
with this traditional cake was that it didn't last long enough!

Excerted and adapted with permission from Wildwoods Wisdom: Encounters with the Natural World, by Doug Elliot, Paragon House, 1992 (ISBN1-55778-529-5).

(1) L.H. Bailey, the Apple Tree (new York: Mcmillan Co., 1922) p. 68.

Doug Elliott is a nationally known educator and storyteller. He has books and recordings that celebrate nature, and he teaches workshops from his home in Union Mills, NC More on his passion for plant and animal folklore can be found at www.dougelliutt.com.