I wrote this as a discussion board post in my Sustainable Orchard Management course. A few students were talking about it, so I thought I’d give it a broader audience. -TB
It’s so easy to beat up on the old favorite. The apple that personifies American throwaway culture. The individually wrapped processed cheese slice of apples. The apple that teachers do not want students to put on their desk. I’m talking about Red Delicious. After class last week I took an RD with me and admired it on my dashboard as I made my way up Shelburne Rd to the Interstate. Once I was all set in my cruising lane and set to do a 35-minute drive on muscle memory. I decided to dive in.
The skin of a Red Delicious has a certain sort of smell. Since they are usually coming from a packing house some of that is probably due in no small part to the diphenylamine that the apples are dunked in before storage to prevent flesh breakdown in the cold room and the wax that is applied after they are pulled from their winter slumber and run over the pack line. Through that, you can smell the subtle aroma coming from the fruit itself. It’s like a muted form of Gala’s aroma- not all perfumey like McIntosh or candy and bubblegum like Honeycrisp. Red Delicious gives off a more austere aroma. It’s not begging for attention- it already commanded that with its deep crimson hue and distinctive shape.
As someone noted in class, the skin has a certain bitterness to it, but not like the bitter cider apples, whose tannins can make you feel like you’re chewing a tea bag. It’s like a little bit of medicine aftertaste in a gin and tonic. And that analogy may be a good one, as the red color in the skin is derived from anthocyanins which serve as important antioxidants that protect the fruit from sun and disease damage. But remember that Red Delicious was selected for eating rather than cidermaking in the late 19th century when commercial orcharding for the fresh fruit market was in its infancy. Many apples had bitter skin and even flesh but were destined for the cider barrel or pig troughs. Red Delicious was among the first wave of fruit that were destined for fruit bowls on the tables of an emerging middle class in urban areas, which until recently were only filled seasonally, and rarely with attractive-looking apples that kids would happily pick up and eat.
That slightly bitter skin is a little thick, but easily bitten and chewed. The protective blanket is needed no more once the fruit has been bitten after attaining full ripeness. Aside from human intervention in selecting strains and managing cloned trees all lined up in rows, remember that this apple was selected from a wild seedling. Red Delicious evolved its traits to first protect the fruit, then draw seed disperser’s attention to it, then to convince them to collect more so those seeds could spread across the countryside. The ultimate evolutionary trick of the Red Delicious was to convince an entire industry to propagate its genes and spread them around the world. While not what ‘nature intended’- that would be the spread of heterogeneous seedlings across a localized region, as far as a bird might fly or a deer may travel before pooping out seeds from its last meal, the spread of Red Delicious across the landscape is arguably an incredible quirk of the coevolution of the apple and human society.
This wouldn’t have happened if Red Delicious tasted like any old bitter, tart seedling that grew all over the Eastern U.S. by the time railroads were running goods all over the country. The flavor Red Delicious is often described as bland, but that subtlety which presents itself as all fruit, no bitter, and without the sharp acid bite typical of many fruit of the time. This was a revelation to a country that was becoming more civilized as it found its footing from rocky upstart beginning, a brash expansion across the continent and emerged from a Civil War to eventually find its feet and become a serious economic and cultural contender on the world stage. Red Delicious was selected to show that that impetuous brat the United States of America had gotten its act together, cleaned up, and now could present itself as responsible and civilized in a world of nations who had long grown out of those teenage years.
For the next fifty years, growers, packers, even consumers moved the definition of Red Delicious further toward that stylized ideal- perfect from the outside, uniform in thought and agreement, displaying its superiority more and more with each new selection. Sure, we may have overshot the style over substance a bit. But the fact remains that Delicious built an industry, and that industry mimicked the rise of a nation into one that commanded respect on the world stage. Maybe the current hate for Red Delicious is analogous to the erosion in confidence of our capitalist system. But maybe the replacement of Red Delicious with other fruit whose own traits for superior aroma, taste, and visual display is an example of capitalism done right- the consumer has been speaking for decades that they want more, and they are getting it with all the new apples that have pushed Delicious to the wayside. Like recent ancestors from 3,4,5 generations ago who helped to found society as we know it- warts and all- Red Delicious made its mark on history, and the apple industry may not be where it is today had it not been found by Jesse Hiatt growing on a riverbank in Peru, Iowa in 1872.
Red Delicious Apples Weren’t Always Horrible – New England