There are 7500 apple types known today. These apple varieties may have different tastes and aromas. The taste of apple fruit may range from sour to honey sweet. The apple fruits flavor can be dependent upon various factors such as the weather, terrain, latitude, and the amount of apple fruit tree care.
What chemicals can influence the apple fruit flavor? The apple fruit flavor is the charming combination of sweetness, tartness, bitterness and fragrance that arouses the human senses.
The sweet flavor, about 9 to 12 percent of the apple fruit, is originated from fructose and sucrose which are two chemicals of natural sugar. The acid content of the apple fruit is made of malic (90%) and citric acid (10%). The malic acid may constitute 0.4 to 1 percent of the apple fruit. The astringent taste that we experience from biting an apple fruit originates from tannins which are about 0.2 percent of the apple fruit.
The apple fruit aroma is mixture of 250 trace chemicals in apple fruit, such as aldehydes, volatile esters, and alcohols.
The old apple cultivars were sweater than the modern apple cultivars. One reason is that the apple breeding in modern day is less concentrated on the flavor quality and is more focused on high fruit production, commercial suitability for submission,equality of shape, size and color, and high withstanding quality for transportation with minimum bruising which has resulted in tough skinned apple fruits.
People from various regions in the world may favor various apple flavors. In Asia, people mostly favor apple fruits with super sweet flavor and you can rarely find a person who favors the acid flavor. In Europe and North America, people mostly favor subacid, sweet apples and tart apple fruits have the least fans.
The recently produced apple fruit cultivars are crispy but soft. Also, some desired characteristics are considered for the modern apple fruit, some of which are: lack of russeting, colorful skin, storage feasibility, ease of shipping, having an acceptable shape similar to Red Delicious shape, being resistant to diseases, having a flavor favored by most of people, and long stem which helps insecticide penetration to the top of the apple fruit.
The old cultivars, which some of them still exist today, which have a strong flavor have some shortcomings. They are not commercially profitable because this apple trees yield low crop and are not good for transportation. Moreover, the old cultivars have an inferior appearance, odd shape, and are various in color and texture. Although the old cultivars are not commercially accepted, they are still produced on a large scale by some apple orchard owners and home gardeners. These old cultivars have their own special flavor and appearance. One example is Egremont Russet apple type which is nut flavored.