Selective Elective

The Swiss Gourmet apple, also known as the Artlet, is vibrant in skin color. Biting into it felt like a travesty. To break apart those lovely covers into white flesh. Travesty turned into pleasure, as the Arlet has a candy-like sweetness. For lack of a better word I will say dessert-like. If it were a piece of candy or…

The Jonagold looks like a typical apple that is see in shows and movies: red with stripes, and of that average-medium size that fits perfectly in your hand. It is epitome of everything I expect in a fall-esque apple. Crispy and crunchy. The flesh is tart and succulent, but not too juicy such that eating becomes messy. Some…

The Empire apple is extraordinarily crisp and crunchy. Its flesh is hard and breaks audibly. The skin is a little bitter and tough, but that does not detract from the experience that the white flesh gives. The Empire apple’s succulent body is a synthesis of sweet, tangy, and tart. Mostly the latter. Juice flows from…

The Mutsu apple is distinguishable for the spots on its skin. The apple I had to take a picture of doesn’t show it, but on most Mutsu they have black freckled spots covering their pale green skin. Some Mutsu’s have a red flush, like the one pictured. The flavor is what really makes it. The Mutsu begins as sweet…

Cortland apples are another type of fall apple. When I bit into it I thought it was going to have crispy flesh: the skin was tough to break into. I was wrong though, the flesh is moderately soft. Not all apples benefit from having crunchy flesh, and this one works well with the softness. There is a…

The Rome apple is tiny and dense. The amount of effort I had to exert to simply bite into it was obnoxious and when I did tear a chunk off the flesh was dry. What scant juice there was within the Rome apple’s flesh was tasty. It would be best described as an airy tartness. The flavor…

The Macintosh apple is soft and round. Within seconds of my first bite I knew that the flesh of the Macintosh apple was mushy. In the unappealing way. It just fell apart. The texture is frail, and does not have much juice. The flavor of the Macintosh apple is a mix between tart and sweet. It begins sweet…

The Jonamac apple is a cross between the McIntosh and Jonathan. It has a gradient between red and green, as shown in the picture. Rather large. The flesh of the Jonamac apple is not crunchy or crisp, but is firm. Firm and soft at the same time. Easy to bite into, sort of dry. It is mildly tart.…

The Diva apple is a small and normal-looking. Biting into it is easy. There was a lot of liquid in the Diva apple. It felt almost soft and mushy. Its watery-ness lends itself to a mushy texture but it is actually crunchy. Taste wise the Diva apple is bland. It has some flavor, a kind of…

The Tsugaru apple does not have any specific physical characteristics that make it distinguishable. It kind of looks like a Fuji. The texture and consistency is best described as barely enough to be considered crunchy. Like, I would almost call it mushy. Soft, but somehow hard enough to give a crunch. As for taste, it is really…