Apples, Blackberries Join Flavors

About the time yellow-green, summer apples are coming into their own, lustrous, black-purple blackberries ripen. The wild berries, available in many parts of the country, have superb flavor and relatively small seeds. Gather them; put up with stained fingers and thorn pricks—it’s worth it. Combine them with early apples for a pie that can’t be surpassed.

Summer apples are juicy, tart and fast-cooking—ideal for pies. They make superior applesauce, too, but brown too quickly when cut for salads and they’re too tart to eat out of hand. But don’t weep over these shortcomings . . . they make superior pies.