Apple
Cooking Tip: Bake in the oven with ginger or fennel seeds and grated orange or lemon peel. Use apples in a fruit salad with finely chopped rosemary, poppy seeds or cress grinded. If the apples begin to darken and there is no lemon then dip them peeled in salted water.

Apple refers to the fruit of the apple tree Malus sylvestris var. domestica which requires cool winters to fruit. There are thousands of varieties but only about fifty are commercially available. Dessert varieties are sweetish, sometimes combined with acid, used for eating raw, and, since they keep their shape on cooking, are used for tarts and in other cases where the shape of the cut fruit is important. Cooking varieties are generally acid and become soft and mushy when boiled, stewed or baked.