The sun is back and bright, and the temperatures continue to be on the colder side. At 8AM this morning it was still -8F and windy. A good day to shuffle papers, do a few apple ID’s, crank up the wood stove and make some sauce.
Lately I’ve been experimenting with using bittersharp apples in our sauce. I made two batches last week using a blend that included the English bittersharp, Kingston Black. It was excellent. The last couple days it’s been pure Dandeneau, another bittersharp. I’d been thinking about using bittersharps in sauce for sometime now, but somehow they all got consumed in the press and never made it to the pot. That changed this year. We didn’t harvest the Kingston’s and the Dandeneau’s until after we’d done our big pressing. Then the temperatures went south (or actually north), and it’s been too cold to press. So all of a sudden we have these bittersharps begging to be used.
The sharps are high in acid. (“sharp!”) Acidity is a must for sauce. Yes, you can make sauce from “lo-acid” apples but it takes forever and it’s never that good. The bitterness gives the sauce another interesting flavor element. We’ve given up using sugar or spices in the sauce. Let the apples speak for themselves! I’m willing to bet that the sugar and spices increasingly gained favor as the apples became less and less flavorful in deference to whatever it is that modern apples are supposed to be. If you’re going to eschew sugar and spice, then you’re now obliged to find apples with something to sing about!
Turns out Dandeneau is a good—maybe even a great—sauce apple. I may never press it again. It ripens super-late. We didn’t pick them until November, and it looks like they’re going to keep really well. They cook fast ,and the consistency is like whipped cream or maybe even guacamole - really thick and creamy. And the flavor is there. Don’t ruin it with sugar and spice and everything nice!