"recipes" for apples with no taste?

Any ideas for recipes or uses for zero taste apples? Years ago, we had a diseased apple die back to the rootstock (or what I thought was the rootstock which has been healthy ever since). We let it regrow to make a nice tree which produces apples that look ok but have zero taste (literally no taste, sort of like liquid cardboard with no sweet or sour or tart). I suppose they look sort of like a dull colored red delicious (without the bitter skin taste). I have been slowly grafting it to other varieties… but this year, I will have a bumper crop of zero-taste apples. I thought I would try to use them somehow other than feeding cows (although I will have plenty of edible apples otherwise).

I didn’t do a good job of labeling pics, but the apple probably looks a bit like this (although this might not be the right pic):

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Not that I have any “cardboard” variety, but I do have Red Delicious, which is delicious until it’s not…
Then, I either store it (because our dog eats it until April), or use it to make flapjack (the cereal bar).

Cook any fruit (apples / pears work best), add nuts of choice, ginger/cocoa/chilli/ cinnamon /whatever other spices you like , add oats, a pinch of salt, maybe some honey and coconut oil, (you may skip anything other than oats and fruit) stir well, press in a 1cm layer into an oiled baking tray and bake until as firm as you like your cereal bars.

Another option is to use them to mellow jams or fruit leathers from tart fruit like aronia.

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Yeah, filler for jam or cooked stuff with other fruit that is strongly flavored.

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I would consider a fermentation process, e.g. for vinegar.

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If they are juicy they could add volume to a cider mix

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Yes, I think they are reasonably juicy.

Thanks for all the suggestions so far!

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Good suggestions. If if cooks up nicely then use it as an pie filler or for a apple crisp, using different apples mainly but adding these apples to make it bigger.
Any idea what the apple was before the main trunk died? Or rootstcok it was on?

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Good questions. :slight_smile: It was a farm store purchase that my wife made. The top was probably gala or something like that (it died so long ago that I lost track). I assumed that the rootstock might be m111 but have no idea what apples that might make. I thought they might be like northern spy but these aren’t i guess. The rootstock annually regrows more root suckers that the woolly apple aphids love.

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Tough to know what rootstock they put on trees bought at big box stores or even some local nurseries when they get their stock from other places. True, M111 can sucker a lot. The only rootstock that I have that suckers that much is the M111. The M7 does some but not as much as my M111. I think I remember reading the M111 was some sort of Northern Spy apple rootstock derivative, maybe I am mistaken about that.

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I have an ‘Aromatnaya’ quince that probably would be perfect for adding, sliced in pie or through the grinder for applesauce. It’s strongly sweet/sour, densely crisp, bears heavily without pollination. Early fall, only seems to be bothered by cucurlio, one timed spray deals with that.

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@snowflake

Add lime or lemon juice for the sour and sugar for the sweet. It will fool almost anyone in an apple pie. Pioneers knew these tricks. The original apple pies were normally mock apple pies. They used crackers for apples. They had no apples for pies. Add the apples and they will say its the best they have eaten. In a pinch a vitamin c tablet and sugar works wonders on apples. My sister makes pear pies you would swear are apples.

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M111 apples are small 100 gram sour balls with astringency.

I’d wager quite a bit of the nurseries skimp on rootstock cost by growing cheaply available Malus Pumilla (red delicious) seeds.

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Isn’t Red Delicious Malus domestica?

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That is what I thought. But for some reason tree seed vendors use Pumila. Forestry sales too.

Why? I have no idea.

We plan to try Bittenfelder as a medium size rootstock with very good general purpose apples.

Of course there are Antonova and Borowinski too. Ulm Police and Jadernicka have been used for seedlings.

"In modern times, Malus pumila and Malus domestica are the two main names in use. M. pumila is the older name, but M. domestica has become much more commonly used starting in the 21st century, especially in the western world. Two proposals were made to make M. domestica a conserved name: the earlier proposal was voted down by the Committee for Vascular Plants of the IAPT in 2014, but in April 2017 the Committee decided, with a narrow majority, that the newly popular name should be conserved. The General Committee of the IAPT decided in June 2017 to approve this change, officially conserving M. domestica. Nevertheless, some works published after 2017 still use M. pumila as the correct name, under an alternate taxonomy.

“When first classified by Linnaeus in 1753, the pears, apples, and quinces were combined into one genus that he named Pyrus and he named the apple as Pyrus malus. This was widely accepted, however the botanist Philip Miller published an alternate classification in The Gardeners Dictionary with the apple species separated from Pyrus in 1754. He did not clearly indicate that by Malus pumila he meant the domesticated apple. Nonetheless, it was used as such by many botanists. When Moritz Balthasar Borkhausen published his scientific description of the apple in 1803 it may have been a new combination of P. malus var. domestica, but this was not directly referenced by Borkhausen. The earliest use of var. domestica for the apple was by Georg Adolf Suckow in 1786.”

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Sounds like a Ben Davis apple variety. They have that wet cardboard texture and taste to them. They kept a long time though. That was their benefit- long storage capability.

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Funny. It’s easy growth and long keeping still led it to be bred to other Varieties. Despite the meh flavor.

This year I got weenie scions of Shockley Grizzle strain. If I get it to take it wlll be interesting to compare it to regular Shockley.

The claim is it is much sweeter with more flavor.

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