Fresh From the Orchard | New England Apple Recipes
Few New England seasons are sweeter than the apple harvest. Celebrate with favorite apple recipes like apple pie and homemade cider doughnuts.
By Amy Traverso|Aug 08 2011|
Vermont Apple Cider Doughnuts
Credit: Squire Fox
Blue Ribbon Deep-Dish Apple Pie
Credit: Squire FoxCredit: Squire Fox But no apples taste as good to me as those grown in New England, where you’ll see remnants of former orchards in long-abandoned fields, in forests, and even in most cities. Apples are so tied to our history that when I first began my research, I half-expected to learn that the Pilgrims had found rows of Baldwin and McIntosh trees when they first stepped ashore at Plymouth. In reality, North America’s only native apple species are crabapples. The sweet apples we associate with home and country first originated in Asia, and over time were carried west via ancient trade routes; they eventually landed in North America in the 17th century when colonizing Brits carried them along.
Vermont Apple Cider Doughnuts
Credit: Squire FoxCredit: Squire Fox The first original American apple variety, a chance seedling that came to be called Blaxton’s Yellow Sweeting, sprouted up around 1625 on the property of the Rev. William Blaxton (also spelled Blackstone), the first British settler in Boston. The site of his homestead is now Beacon Hill; a memorial plaque at 50 Beacon Street honors him. Not long after Blaxton’s success, someone–it’s not clear who–discovered a sweet, russeted, green apple growing in a field in Roxbury, south of Boston, and liked it well enough to propagate it. It became the Roxbury Russet apple, which is still in active production today.
Apple & Mustard Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
Credit: Squire FoxCredit: Squire Fox For the early colonists, apples weren’t just a sweet table fruit. They were the source of cider vinegar, which was used in food preservation. They provided hard apple cider, and from cider came distilled ciderjack, which was used as a spirit, a preservative, and an anesthetic. Soon there were orchards lining the Eastern Seaboard as far south as northern Georgia, and apples became a staple of American cooking. By 1905, when the United States Department of Agriculture produced a catalogue of all known apple varieties grown domestically during the previous century, the total count exceeded 14,000. Today the U.S. Apple Association says that only about 100 varieties are grown on a significant commercial scale–but apples still thrive here in New England and in other parts of the country. How many of us can experience fall without a visit to the local orchard? When you pick local fruit, you’re keeping our apple heritage alive. And then when you do return home with your bounty, you can use these recipes to make the most of this fruit, so wedded to who we are and where we come from.
Apple-Studded Brown-Butter Streusel Coffee Cake
Credit: Squire Fox
