If you’re an apple pie maker this is your time of year. Between now and Thanksgiving, Vermont pie makers will have available a profusion of terrific pie apples, more than you’ve ever seen before. Literally. Really.
It’s not that there have been no excellent pie apples in the local harvest so far. Bakers with a religious commitment to the best varieties could have made pies with some combination of Red Astrachan and Duchess of Oldenburg beginning in mid to late August. Those pies were excellent, but Astrachan was extremely hard to find and there weren’t many varieties to twin with Duchess.
The lean times are now over. One of the very good base pie apples, Gravenstein, is now available in places like City Market in Burlington, Hunger Mountain Coop in Montpelier, and, I assume, in the Brattleboro Co-op. You could blend the Gravs with Duchess, which are still in the markets. My pie panel — my wife; Pete, an apple pie aficionado of vast experience from Walpole, N.H.; Larry from Norwich, who is a contender for the annual local apple pie contest, and Kerry, my next door neighbor in Burlington, who is just plain a terrific cook — chose to make pies in mid-September from a mix of three parts Gravenstein to one part Lamb Abbey Pearmain, a favorite of Zeke Goodband at Scott Farm in Dummerston.
These pies were quite good—Pete gave his a seven, and given that Pete is a dour skeptic when handing out his rates (his base is 10) that combination is a good pie. My wife and I made two side by side: one just Gravenstein, the other Gravenstein plus some Lamb Abbeys. The second was slightly better, mostly because it was a little sweeter. Larry, who has a scientific bent, did the same but went to the trouble of precisely measuring the inputs—sugar, some spices, etc. He got the same result we did—the Lamb Abbey lent some sweetness, but it didn’t make any discernible contribution to flavor.
Now, however, there is a much bigger selection of potential blending varieties in the markets. Even more important, the first of the big four base pie apples are coming into the markets beginning this week. It is Belle de Boskoop, a Dutch or German variety that is one of the very best European culinary apples. (Yet to come are Bramley’s Seedling and Calville Blanc d’Hiver). Pete was the first out of the gate with a pie, a combination of half Belle de Boskoop and half Holstein, a powerfully acidic apple. I bought one at City Market in Burlington about a week ago and ate it on the way home. I decided you could put it in your kid’s lunch box if your kid was a Navy Seal, but otherwise, maybe not.
I suspected, however, that Holstein was exactly the kind of apple that would become magical once it was baked into a pie. And according to Pete, it surely did. He gave it a 10 — I don’t recall another Pete 10 in several years of panel pie making. He emailed me at 3 in the morning to say, “Best pie I ever cooked.” I’m going to make one today with half Belle de Boskoop, about a third Holstein, and a handful of Lamb Abbey Pearmain to give it a little sweetness. I’ve found that the optimal formula for a nine-inch pie, admittedly a paltry thing from a size perspective, but not a bad idea if you make a lot of them, is three cups of the base apple, two cups of a powerfully acidic apple like Holstein, and one cup of a sweetie like Lamb Abbey.
Other mixing possibilities: Zeke Goodband has sent a variety called Franc Rambour into the markets. It’s a terrific eating apple and worth trying in combination with one of the big culinary apples. Sometimes that doesn’t work. Paula Reds, now mostly gone by, are good eating apples, but seem to fade in the heat of the oven. In my experience, the most striking example of that phenomenon is an heirloom called Hubbardston Nonesuch. I ate a Nonesuch one late September afternoon in the Scott Farm orchards a few years ago and it was simply wonderful, one of the best eating apples I’ve ever tasted. I immediately bought a box and the whole panel made pies out of just that variety. No taste at all, deadly. The panel was in revolt — no more of those, ever.
That’s the price of getting back to the roots of the American apple. Some work in pies, some don’t. Holstein works as a blend with a great base apple, Dolga Crab does also, Rhode Island Greening (not yet available) is superb. So is Kjarmin de Sonneville, also yet to come, as is Cox’s Orange Pippin. You gotta try ‘em.
One of the most intriguing is an apple I saw in Burlington the other day is Ribston Pippin. The Ribston is a terrific hard cider apple and I have long thought that the powerful tannins and acids in hard cider apples would also play well in pies. I’m going to try that one after the Belle de Boskoop-Holstein mix.