A Few Good Apples

A century ago, when setting out to make an apple cake, pie or brown Betty, you could choose from dozens of apple varieties. Today, supermarkets pretty much limit us to the same handful. Grown more for their shipping properties than for taste, today’s apples look big, shiny and unblemished; they taste little more than “crisp and crunchy.”

But there’s hope. Varieties new to us, many of them actually “heirloom” apples that haven’t been seen for decades, are turning up with more and more frequency at farmers’ markets and well-stocked supermarkets, as growers respond to a more adventurous and food-conscious public.