Tom Doorley: An apple a day

Those houses, the semi-detached three and four bedroomed houses that created the suburbs in the years just after World War II, very often seem to have come ready equipped with a couple of apple trees.

In the late 1940s, there must have been a boom in sales of two of the most famous apple tree varieties, Cox's Orange Pippin and the big, greasy skinned sour Bramley's Seedling. The latter is our favourite - almost our sole - cooking apple in Ireland, its tart flesh sweetened with plenty of sugar and encased in puff pastry. The former is one of the best eating apples. Perhaps the best.

Consider what Edward Bunyard had to say in The Anatomy of Dessert, published in 1929 and, despite the title, a lyrical account of the pleasure of fruit.  "November, then, for apple lovers, is the Cox's month, and this fruit needs no introduction or eulogy, the Chateau d'Yquem of apples and, to my taste, to be similarly used". Well, times have changed, of course and Chateau d'Yquem is used mainly these days by billionaires. Cox's Orange Pippin, even when so good that it rivals this greatest of all dessert wines, is almost free.

Anyone who scrumped orchards will remember how the fruit was never ripe and how green apples gave us tummy trouble because beneath that scruffy and often somewhat malodorous exterior there lurked a tender little digestive tract which while it was used to more conventional abuse, simply couldn't hack this kind of thing.

Apples are generally picked too early, as soon as they reach what we imagine to be the right size. Cox's, for example, will start to look really good towards the end of September but, as Mr Bunyan points out, they come into their own in November. The trick is to pick them in mid-October or as soon as the skin is a lovely mixture or gold and dark red. Eat them then, by all means, but keep a few, wrapped in newspaper and stored in a cool place, until the next month when they will be at their most delicious peak.

The other trick with Cox's, if you have an old tree that produces lots and lots of fruit, is to thin the little apples in July so that the remaining ones have both the space and the resources to grow to a reasonable size. Cox's are never a big apple but there's no reason why they should be as small as they usually are in the average garden.

Mind you, there are other apples, old and new, that will be ripe sooner. They will be ready within the next few weeks: Worcester Pearmain (which keeps well) and Katie, crunchy and juicy but needs to be eaten within a day of picking for the best taste and juiciness.

Bramleys are good keepers if you have a cool, frost-free and dry shed or attic in which to store them. But beware of bruised ones, and therefore windfalls, as they go off in no time. The best of ours keep until March but there’s a high casualty rate and you need to pick out – literally – the bad apples.

It only occurs to me now that what we used to call apple tart at home when I was a child wasn't apple tart at all. A tart is an open affair, a pie with no top. My mother's 'apple tarts' were shallow pies the sliced Bramley fruit entirely enclosed in rough-puff pastry encrusted with sugar crystals, applely syrup oozing through the vent holes.

That, for me, is the smell of childhood weekends, the scent of hot apple with cloves and the fragrance of hot flour and sugar hovering in the kitchen air. It came after roast beef with proper gravy and makes the most magically nostalgic combination, not just in thought but also in reality.