Language study has long fascinated me, and as a recent post may demonstrate, so has baking. I recently read Words to Eat By: Five Foods and the Culinary History of the English Language, an interesting history of five historically English food staples, and their storied history of nomenclature. The apple is one of these such foods, the only fruit native to Great Britain, though there it was more associated with the crab apple than the larger and sweeter varieties that we routinely eat today.

The apple is believed to be one of the first fruits that was cultivated; with over 7,500 cultivars all stemming from a common ancestor of Malus sieversii. Most are created through grafting, as the apple plant is extremely heterozygous, meaning that it doesn’t just inherit DNA from its parent plants, but can differ dramatically. Combine that with the large genetic sequence (an apple tree has almost twice the number of genes as a human), and the fact that they are triploids (3 sets of chromosomes, which don’t divide evenly), and wild variations are hard to come by. Were humans to stop grafting and cultivating apples, they would eventually return to a state more like the wild ancestor that they are derived from. Throughout all of our meddling though, some amazing varieties in shape, size, color, russeting, and flavor, along with factors important beyond taste, such as habitable climates and ability to store and travel well.

The bible does not state what kind of fruit grew on the Tree of Knowledge, but it was not always represented as an apple. The type of fruit most likely envisioned by the writers would have been the contemporary pomegranate or some similar fruit, but popular culture holds that an apple is what Eve was tempted with. Renaissance painters would draw from Greek mythology in their Christian interpretations, and golden apples have a sordid history in Ancient Greece. Combined with the homophonous nature between the Latin words for apple and evil, and the world’s most popular fruit is branded as a thing of sin. Indeed, the popularity of the apple exceeds any species, as the word for apple in many languages and cultures is synonymous for the term for “fruit” in general. Try it. Close your eyes and think of the word fruit, and see what comes to mind.

By the way, the pie came out smelling and tasting wonderfully, and is definitely something that I will try again.

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