Monday, July 21, 2014

The Northern Spy and Other Edible Antiques

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 1998. All rights reserved.

A Rhode Island Greening is about as common in the contemporary American kitchen as a butter churn. It's as likely to be used as a woodburning cookstove or an icebox. Few of them have ever been microwaved.

The Northern Spy, once a standby at neighborhood grocers, is rarely seen in today's supermarkets. It's gone the way of the horse-drawn carriage and the stagecoach. Just try to find one.

The Greening and the Spy are both apples, two of the finest-tasting varieties ever to touch the American palate. But today they are "antiques," each more than a century old. Each has been replaced by varieties of apple better suited to the mass-production technologies of the modern era: Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith.

Continued at... The Northern Spy and Other Edible Antiques

Rural Delivery
Apples
Home and Garden Center
Out of the Past
Artwork: Northern Spy