The phrase “As American as apple pie” has become shorthand for Americana. But while the oldest apple variety in the U.S. comes from Roxbury, and the apple is the state fruit of Vermont, the apple hasn’t always been a New England specialty.
In fact, as Yankee Magazine’s Amy Traverso pointed out, apples’ genetic roots trace back to an entirely different continent: Asia, where Silk Road traders would pluck fresh apples from the foothills of the Tian Shan apple range.
“[Apples] followed civilization westward across the world,” said Traverso, author of “The Apple Lover’s Cookbook.”
“You see mentions of apples in Persian literature, certainly Greek literature, and then the Romans just went crazy with apples and really spread them all over their empire, which is how they made their way to England.”
When England first colonized northeast America, apples followed suit, though they were rarely tasty enough for snacking purposes. Because apples have an extreme abundance of genetics, growing the same variety twice was impossible, meaning colonists had no way to predict whether a crop would taste good.
Instead, farmers would store apples throughout the winter for livestock feed and cooking purposes, turning what Traverso called an “inedible fruit” into cider.
“Cider became the most commonly consumed beverage in America for a time,” Traverso said. “It was, in many places, safer than drinking water. Children drank it. John Adams drank a lot of it; he’d drink it at breakfast. So it was the American beverage.”
As Americans expanded west, more types of apples popped up due to the planting efforts of the very real Johnny Appleseed, whose real name was John Chapman. However, without detailed record-keeping, the abundance of varieties makes tracking down historical apples a guessing game. In Maine alone, pomologist Sean Turley describes “nearly half a thousand” different types of apples springing up by the second half of the 19th century.
Today, much of Turley’s research is informed by a doctoral thesis drafted in the 1910s by a man who focused his studies on local apple varieties.
“What that [thesis] has allowed us to do is get a sense of where various historical varieties were grown,” Turley said. “Many of them are unique to Maine or perhaps they’re synonyms of apples grown elsewhere. And those records are specific enough to maybe identify a town where we knew it was grown, [or] someone’s farm where we knew that apple was grown.”
Grafting is how farmers are able to replicate beloved apple varieties. But, according to Turley, because apples “grow like weeds” in New England’s climate, he and other pomologists are regularly contacted by landowners to identify apple trees, some of which are historic and rare.
Every year, Turley says when he attends Maine’s Common Ground Fair, he’s still surprised by the “incredible missing pieces” of apple history that people discover on the East coast.
“There was an apple discovered in Maine called ‘Drap d’Or de Bretagna’… probably one of the most important historical apples, certainly for New England,” Turley said. “And someone just walked in with it.”
Guests
- Amy Traverso, senior food editor at Yankee Magazine, co-host of GBH’s Weekends with Yankee, author of “The Apple Lover’s Cookbook, food and wine contributor for “Under the Radar.”
- Sean Turley, apple forager, historian, photographer, author of “Practical Pomology: A Field Guide.”
