Diving Into the Ingredients That Make Us: Apples

Words by Matt Dursum

No matter where you buy produce in the world, you’re sure to find apples. The usual varieties like Golden Delicious, Macintosh, and Red Delicious are ubiquitous worldwide, but this is just the boring surface of the apple’s diversity. 

Photo by Mackenzie Marco on Unsplash

When scientists published the genome of the apple tree in 2010, it created quite a shock. The apple, as it turns out, has twice as many genes as us, 57,000 in all. This ensures that each tree’s offspring maintains an almost infinite genetic variation. When an apple seed is germinated, it produces an offspring tree entirely different from its parents and sometimes with entirely different fruit as well. 

The Homeland

Apples have been around for over 50 million years and come from the mountainous forests of central Kazakhstan. Through trade, most notably along the silk road, their seeds wound up in East Asia and Europe well before the beginning of the Roman Empire. 

Photo by Dmitry Sumskoy on Unsplash

Along the way, these diverse trees established themselves in various climates. Their genes were selected for sweetness, acidity, and sometimes for their bite. 

Apples became a staple. They were easy to transport, durable, and they would preserve for longer than almost any other fruit. For our ancestors lacking refrigeration, this was highly attractive. 

In terms of nutrition, they excel. The old saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” is not far from the truth. This is because apples contain tons of insoluble and soluble fiber, Vitamin C, and disease-fighting polyphenols. For our ancestors, these nutrient-rich superfoods were indispensable. 

Their importance for humans living in the northern mid-latitudes was undeniable, and soon the apple made it into our folklore. Tales from Greece to China are full of stories about this incredible fruit. Biblical tales, medieval stories of power and seduction and betrayal, even Newtonian physics borrowed the spherical fruit to describe to lay persons the law of gravity. Apples slowly permeated our diet, our cultures, and our imaginations and have stayed there ever since. 

What About the booze? 

Currently, there are over 7500 varieties grown throughout the world. Not every apple will taste the same and some taste bitter and starchy. Our early ancestors would have spit these fruits out in disdain. These “spitters” as they’re often described are like biting into an unripe banana or persimmon. They don’t make good snacks, but they make excellent booze. 

Photo by Olivia Bauso on Unsplash

Archeological evidence of cider making is found all over the world. Grinding stones in Europe and Asia and fermentation vessels all point to thousands of years of fermenting apples into cider. Afterall, alcohol preserves water and our ancestors were looking for new ways to produce booze for long-term water preservation and, of course, getting their kicks during festivities. 

When Arab traders and explorers brought distillation technology to Europe, one of the first things the Europeans did was distill cider. They soon discovered that the best apples for making alcohol were the bitter, sour, and highly tannic varieties unfit for consumption. If you’ve ever wondered why some apple fields are full of un-edible “spitter” apples, you can thank booze. 

Photo by Marek Studzinski on Unsplash

Today craft cider dominates the market as a delicious gluten-free substitute for beer. In addition to cider, distillers around the world continue to use apples as a base ingredient for their products. European staples like French Calvados and American Apple Brandy have helped put the apple into every serious booze nerd and bartender’s repertoire. 

From healthy snack, object in literature, to base ingredient in crafty cocktails, the apple is and always will be one of our most treasured foods.