The Apple: A Delicious History - Sally Coulthard

Sin, cider and apple crumble... the 10,000-year story of the world's most tempting fruit. 

The Apple: A Delicious History takes the reader on an extraordinary journey, from the apple's prehistoric beginnings in the Tian Shan mountains of Kazakhstan to the explosion of commercial apple-growing in twenty-first-century China. Zigzagging across the centuries and straddling the globe, Sally Coulthard explores how the apple travelled along the Silk Road from Central Asia to Europe, appearing as an erotically charged symbol in Greek myth and poetry and even featuring in the shopping list of a senior Roman officer stationed at Hadrian's Wall. She samples the cider that flowed from the emperor Charlemagne's orchards in the early Middle Ages, and relishes the crispness of the yellow sweeting, the first new apple variety to be cultivated in seventeenth-century America. And she discovers why, despite the existence of more than 7500 varieties of apple - from the ubiquitous Granny Smith to the purple-skinned Black Diamond of Tibet - only a handful of cultivatars are available in modern supermarkets.

Amplified by mouth-wateringly appley recipes and the stories behind them, The Apple: A Delicious History embraces not only culinary, horticultural, social and commercial history but also age-old traditions in mythology, folklore and religion. It is the perfect gift book for gardeners and nature lovers - and for anyone who enjoys a drop of cider or a slice of apple pie. 

Reviews: 

'The real voice of the proper countryside' - John Lewis-Stempel

'An enlightening and delicious journey from ancient myth to modern agribusiness through the rich history of the humble apple'  - Eleanor Barnett, author of Leftovers 

'From the mouth-puckering Bramley to the scrumptiously tart Cox - Sally takes us through a crisp, delicious history' - Mich Turner MBE

'Coulthard's style is never less than effortlessly readable' - Yorkshire Times

Publisher: Apollo

ISBN: 9781803287966

Pages: 368

Weight: 468g

Dimensions: 144 x 33 x 223 mm