APPLE, (Encycl.) For Malus read Pyrus.
The best method of preserving apples for winter use, is to let them hang upon the trees until there is danger of frost, to gather them in dry weather, and then to lay them in large heaps to sweat for a month or six weeks. They ought then to be carefully looked over, all which have the least appearance of decay taken out, the found fruit wiped dry, and packed up in large oil jars, which have been thoroughly scalded and dry, and then stopped close to exclude the air. If this plan is duly observed, the fruit will keep a long time sound, and their flesh remain plump; whereas, when exposed to the air, their skins will shrivel, and their pulp soften.
Among the various kinds of apples, some are used for the dessert, some for the kitchen, and some for cyder-making. Those used for the dessert are the following, placed as they successively ripen after one another: The white juncating, the margaret apple, the summer pearmain, the summer queening, the embroidered apple, the golden rennet, the summer white calville, the summer red calville, the silver pippen, the aromatic
Apple aromatic pippin, la reinette grise, la haute bonte, the royal russeting. Wheeler's russet, Sharp's russet, the spine apple, the golden pippin, the nonpareil, the Papi or pomme d'api.
Those for the kitchen use, in the order of their ripening are these: The codling, the summer marygold, the summer red pearmain, the Holland pippin, the Kentish pippin, the courpendu, Loan's pearmain, the French rennet, the French pippin, the royal russet, the monstrous rennet, the winter pearmain, the pomme violette, Spencer's pippin, the stone pippin, and the oaken pippin.
Those most esteemed for cyder are, the Devonshire royal wilding, the redstreak apple, the whitfour, the Herefordshire under-leaf, and the John apple, or deux annes, everlasting hanger, and gennet moyle.
The apple is composed of four distinct parts, viz. the pill, the parenchyma, the branchery, and the core. The pill or skin is only a dilatation of the outermost skin or rind of the bark of the branch on which it grew. The parenchyma or pulp, as tender and delicious as it is found, is only a dilatation, or, as Dr Grew calls it, a swelling or superbience of the inner part of the bark of the branch. This appears not only from the visible continuation of the bark from the one through the pedicle or stalk to the other, but also from the structure common to both. The branchery or vessels, are only ramifications of the woody part of the branch, sent throughout all the parts of the parenchyma, the greater branches being made to communicate with each other by inosculation of the less.
The apple core is originally from the pith of the branch; the sap of which finding room enough in the parenchyma through which to diffuse itself, quits the pith, which by this means hardens into core.
The juice of apples is a menstruum for iron. A solution of iron in the juice of the apples called golden rennets, evaporated to a thick consistence, proves an elegant chalybeate, which keeps well.