Tuesday, March 23, 2010

culinary prototypes

Continuing with the nostalgic theme and eating a Golden Delicious, which used to be my favourite kind of apple, it became clear that "apple" now first evokes the image of a Pink Lady - a miniscule of a second before just meaning any apple, which to me is a Jonathan, Granny Smith, Akane, Gala, Fuji, Golden Delicious, or (hopefully not) Red Delicious... all those fruits that are sweet with varying bite/sourness, crunch, colour outside on a thin skin, whiteish flesh.

Of course, then there is cooked apple, which for me means Granny Smith, and which is green when it's cooked. (It's an appropriate name if you consider that for many, Granny Smiths are purely for cooking, and have that wonderful grandmotherliness of apple crumble, apple cake/slice, apple sponge, etc. or just stewed apple. Mmm.)

Further in this linguistic vein, did you know that 'apple' just used to mean fruit? And then at some stage.. I think it was due to the Norman conquest and the French introduction of the word 'fruit' (not sure what happened with 'pomme') that then the meaning of 'apple' narrowed to refer only to that particular fruit we now know as the apple.

Apples go with cream. It's approaching that season.

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