Mar 26 2007
Bramley apples, a British culinary icon resurgent
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The British are unusual in making a strict distinction between apples for eating - raw - and apples for cooking - though most of these can be happily eaten raw if stored for a few months.
Of all the varieties of cooking apple, the Bramley is by far the best known and loved, its tart flesh erupting into creamy fluff on cooking. The Bramley is a British culinary icon and particularly associated with Wisbech, in the Cambridgeshire Fens, where the large trees of old were traditionally underplanted with gooseberries (reported in the superb inventory of British foods, The Taste of Britain by Laura Mason and Catherine Brown).
The rich fenland around Wisbech still produces much fruit, though over 50% of the orchards have been lost since the 1930s. But hope is now at hand, with figures from the dunnhumby Academy at the University of Kent showing a 12.7% growth in sales in 2006. (dunnhumby run Tesco’s clubcard and the academy makes some of the vast database available to academics and food businesses.)
After decades of declining sales of British apples, Cambridgeshire apple growers are now planting new trees to meet this resurgent demand. These new orchards are wildly different from the traditional orchards of widely spaced grand old trees, with anything from 500 to over 1,000 closely packed dwarf trees to the acre and far higher yields. But this is what it takes for British apple growers to compete with global imports and keep their orchards viable.
Bramleys store well and are available throughout the year. Apple crumble is hard to beat but there are dozens of recipe ideas at www.bramleyapples.co.uk.
Don’t forget other less popular varieties of apple. The East of England Apples and Orchards Project celebrates and documents the hundred of other varieties of apples and other fruit that survive in both new and historic orchards, hedgerows and gardens.
I didn’t know there was a difference between cooking apples and “dessert” apples… Bramleys sound delicious though!
Just moved to the UK and made some nice pies with Bramleys. They’re quite close to Granny Smiths - nice and just tart enough to stand alone well in a pie without having to mix in sweeter apples. They’re somewhat dry as well, like Grannies. I tasted one and it definitely tasted similar to Grannies, but I’m probably breaking some sort of long-standing tradition by saying so.
The Brits definitely are doing their apples right - they’re amazingly tasty!
There’s no reason not to eat cookers. If you like eating Granny Smiths you’ll
like eating Bramleys.
I always thought the distinction that made an apple a ‘cooker’ was that its cells collapsed on cooking, i.e. its flesh went fluffy. There’s at least one other category of apple and that cider apples, meant for making cider. I have never come across one of them (outside a bottle :)