Cooking apple

A cooking apple or culinary apple is an apple that is used primarily for cooking, as opposed to a dessert apple, which is eaten raw. Cooking apples are generally larger, and can be tarter than dessert varieties. Some varieties have a firm flesh that does not break down much when cooked. Culinary varieties with a high acid content produce froth when cooked, which is desirable for some recipes.^[1] Britain grows a large range of apples specifically for cooking. Worldwide, dual-purpose varieties (for both cooking and eating raw) are more widely grown.

There are many apples that have been cultivated to have the firmness and tartness desired for cooking. Yet each variety of apple has unique qualities and categories such as "cooking" or "eating" are suggestive, rather than exact.

How an apple will perform once cooked is tested by simmering a half inch wedge in water until tender, then prodding to see if its shape is intact. The apple can then be tasted to see how its flavour has been maintained and if sugar should be added.^[2]

Apples can be cooked down into sauce, apple butter, or fruit preserves. They can be baked in an oven and served with custard, and made into pies or apple crumble. In the UK roast pork is commonly served with cold apple sauce made from boiled and mashed apples.

A baked apple is baked in an oven until it has become soft. The core is usually removed before baking and the resulting cavity stuffed with fruits, brown sugar, raisins, or cinnamon, and sometimes a liquor such as brandy. An apple dumpling adds a pastry crust.

John Claudius Loudon wrote in 1842:^[3]

Properties of a good apple — Apples for table are characterised by a firm pulp, elevated, poignant flavour, regular form, and beautiful colouring; those for kitchen use by the property of falling as it is technically termed, or forming in general a pulpy mass of equal consistency when baked or boiled, and by a large size. Some sorts of apples have the property of falling when green, as the Keswick, Carlisle, Hawthornden, and other codlins; and some only after being ripe, as the russet tribes. Those with this property when green are particularly valuable for affording sauces to geese early in the season, and for succeeding the gooseberry in tarts.

^ Geissler, Catherine; Vaughan, John A.M. (1997). The New Oxford Book of Plants. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-854825-7.
^ Waters, Alice (2002). Chez Panisse Fruit (First ed.). New York: HarperCollins. p. 4. ISBN 0-06-019957-1.
^ Loudon, J.C. (1842), The Suburban Horticulturist; Or, an Attempt to Teach the Science and Practice of the Culture and Management of the Kitchen, Fruit, and Forcing Garden to Those who Have Had No Previous Knowledge Or Practice in These Departments of Gardening, London: William Smith, p. 529

[Geissler-1] Geissler, Catherine; Vaughan, John A.M. (1997). The New Oxford Book of Plants. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-854825-7.

[Waters_Alice-2] Waters, Alice (2002). Chez Panisse Fruit (First ed.). New York: HarperCollins. p. 4. ISBN 0-06-019957-1.

[3] Loudon, J.C. (1842), The Suburban Horticulturist; Or, an Attempt to Teach the Science and Practice of the Culture and Management of the Kitchen, Fruit, and Forcing Garden to Those who Have Had No Previous Knowledge Or Practice in These Departments of Gardening, London: William Smith, p. 529

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