SAVORY APPLE BREEDING PROJECT

This page is for highlighting the Savory Apples aspect of the Apple Breeding Project. Here can be found links to videos and playlists, blog posts and other information on savory apples and their propagation. First we’ll look at what they are and why we should popularize them and make more of them, then talk about breeding parents and strategies.

WHAT ARE SAVORY APPLES: Savory, or in Japanese Umami, is considered the fifth flavor along with Salty, Sweet, Sour and Bitter. Foods with a lot of Umami are mostly foods you would think of as savory, like meat and seafood, aged cheeses, some wine, yeast, onions and garlic. Those are not foods you would associate with apples, but umami can work with sweet foods and can be great in apples. The best example is malt. Malt is sweet, but it doesn’t have any acid or any high aromatic flavors. It’s a unique flavor, becuase of the savory quality. It spreads out and forms a base of flavor and is pretty unique among sweet things. While there are apples out there that have a small savory compnent, some have a lot. So far the real umami bombs are from the Etter breeding line that he used to produced Wickson, Vixen, Muscat de Venus and Amberoso. I have tasted a little in Trailman though and I’m sure there are others.

This flavor really adds a new dimension to apples. Savory apples can have a full, rich flavor that causes you to really get after it and savor the flavor. Aromatics like pine, fruit flavors and aromatic herbs are often fleeting volatile flavor notes. Savory is broader and forms a base as you eat. It is difficult to explain, and most have never tasted a savory apple. If you imagine putting malt flavor in an apple (in the best way you can imagine), that might hint at it. Or a rich wine taste in an apple. Most savory apples seem to be low in those aromatic high notes, though I’m quite sure we’ll end up with apples that have a lot of both eventually.

What we need is more of these unique apples. Some will become favorites with people I’m sure and more should grow, taste and enjoy them. Since apples are so diverse, there are many different places to go when breeding them. But this is a unique trait that is not a specific flavor so much as a major facet or component. You can say a food is bitter, sour, sweet or salty, but you can’t say that sweet is what makes honey taste like honey or that savory makes Parmesan cheese taste like it does. That is one reason we need a classification for these apples to make them easier to talk about. I hope to see the term Savory Apples normalized. Only time and breeding will tell how the savory component will mix with the many flavors found in apples, but it’s a very exciting proposition. More on that presently.

As far as I know, the trait comes from one or more crab apples that Etter used in breeding. It is readily transmittable. I already have a number of apples that have it to a greater or lesser degree. Until more come to light, I think those original Etter apples and offspring of them are the wellspring to draw from. As far as what to cross them with, I think everything and anything that is interesting for now. It can’t really be said what flavors the savory character of these apples will play well with. So why not try a bunch on for size and find out? I have seedlings of William’s Pride x Vixen that are very good to promising and I think that cross is worth pursuing more. I have a feeling also that some high quality russets, like Golden Russet and Ashmead’s Kernel will make very good parents for breeding savory apples. Apples with pear flavors, which includes many russets, also seem like good bets. We can also of course cross two apples with this characteristic, which I’m now able to do since I have fruiting offspring of Wickson and Vixen.

Below is a list of the savory apples I have with a significant savory component. These are the ones to use in breeding.

WICKSON: Wickson is the best known apple in this group. It is a small apple, with red on a yellow background. It has a lot of umami and a lot of sugar. It is frequently on favorite apple lists, though it’s not for everyone. Wickson is also very high in sugar. While it is interesting and probably a good idea to move forward and breed with Wickson’s offspring, I think it is still well worth going back to the wellspring and using it as a breeding parent. Also, just growing open pollinated wickson seeds is probably going to yield a lot of really good savory varieties. Let the bees do the work and find out what happens! The very first seedling I fruited, BITE ME!, was from an open pollinated Wickson seed. It’s one of my favorite apples here. I’ve sent out thousands of wickson seeds as well as seed from intentional cross pollinations using Wickson as both the seed and pollen parent. I think Wickson is a particularly good candidate for using pollen blends on. I just bag a whole branch, taking off any open flowers. Then each day take off the bag and pollinate the blossoms with a blend of apple pollens. Wickson cracks consistently when the fall rains come here.

VIXEN: Vixen is an apple that was allegedly pulled from Albert Etter’s abandoned experimental orchards by Greenmantle nursery. It is a small apple, but more apple sized than crab sized. Greenmantle’s description of it as being the closest thing to a large Wickson is accurate. It has quite a lot of savory flavor and it’s already a larger apple, so it seems a good parent to use. I have large fruited seedlings of William’s Pride x Vixen that have a strong savory component and most of those crosses are good so far.

AMBEROSO: Like Vixen, also a greenmantle introduction from Etter’s work. I’m not fond of this apple and basically never eat them. But they have considerable savory flavor and I would not be surprised if it were a good parent to use. Amberwine is similar, but better.

MUSCAT DE VENUS: A third Etter apple from greenmantle. This one is large crab sized. Muscat de Venus is the Umami bomb of apples. It has almost no acid, tons of sugar, no fruit flavor and savory to spare. I actually don’t like it. It’s cloying, kind of like eating straight sugar. It reminds me of sweet seafood, such as lobaster, shrimp and crab, but not fishy, just the sweet savory part. I think MDV and similar apples will find a place in cooking, but I’m not sure what it will be yet. Given the huge amount of savory flavor in this apple, I think it will make an excellent parent. Sometimes when you breed an apple into another apple, a characteristic can become diluted. Perhaps the extreme umami onslaught in MDV will allow it to transfer more of that flavor in the first generation. I’ve leaned toward crossing it with sharp apples, and also russets.

BITE ME!: This was my first seedling apple to ever fruit, from a handful of open pollinated Wickson seeds. It is pretty low acid, polite, low in fruit flavors and when ripe very savory. When ripe, the texture could best be described as tender. It is not a crisp or crunchy apple. The fruit flavors it does have tend to be mild, like a green grape. Sugarcane also comes to mind. I started using it in breeding once I realized it was one of my favorites here on the homestead and has gotten a lot of positive comments from the people I’ve fed it to. I was walking the orchards with a girlfriend and she was eating a King David apple I gave her and enjoying it. I handed her a BITE ME! and after one bite, she threw the King David and said “sorry King David”. But I don’t consider this a superior breeder to some of the other possible umami parents. It is on the small side and very prone to scab. infection. I will probably use vixen, wickson and maybe muscat de venus more, but I do use it some and am especially interested in crossing it back to my umami seedling apples like Amberwine.

AMBERWINE (WILLIAMS’ PRIDE X VIXEN): This apple fruited for the first time in 2021. It is a demure sophisticated thing. I like to say if Sweet 16 belongs in the candy aisle, Amberwine belongs in the wine and cheese aisle. It has a beautiful amber background when ripe, which also shows in the flesh and even the wood. It is not a small apple, though variable in size. The flavor, like most of the others, is mild and what makes it special is the growing umami flavor that grows and persists as you eat it. The effect is somwhat wine-like for lack of a better descriptor. It has an odd pulp texture, something like fine wood flour maybe. It is not more fibrous, perhaps less than many apples, it just has a strangely fine texture. Being fine like that, it is easy to extract all the juice and flavor. I’m very looking forward to eating these again this year.

WILLIAMS’ PRIDE X VIXEN 2015 #5: This conical apple is a whole lot like an early BITE ME! It has a similar texture and flavor to that apple, but it is larger. It is very likely more scab resistant too. I don’t think it will prove to be quite as good, but who knows. I have only fruited it one year. Already, I plan to graft it out for a prelude to the BITE ME! season.

JUJUBE: This is one of the batch of open pollinated Wickson seedlings planted in 2010. It is very low in acid. I called it Jujube both because it has the character of that fruit being low acid and cloying, but it actually also tastes like Jujube. It is not a very good apple to me, but possibly useful in breeding since it ripens in August. Amberwine and WP X VIXEN 15/5 are ripe in early fall, but WP is august ripening. Perhaps crossing Jujube to those apples could yield a good savory apple that ripens in August.

CHERUB: Cherub is a small cross of Wickson x Rubaiyat, with red skin and pink flesh. It has a sometimes odd collection of different flavors, berries, roses, caramel or bunr sugar, and umami. I think it has high breeding potential, though it is not strongly savory. It may partially answer the question of how umami will play with fruit flavors, which is peculiarly? It’s an odd bird sometimes. It can very sweet. If it has a major problem, it’s a bit polite and low acid. I’ve seen enough lower acid apples coming from Wickson to think that it might be even be good to lean into crossing it with more acidic apples.

FREDDY MENGE’S KING WICKSON: This small apple is a cross between King David and Wickson. It can be quite savory and seems a good breeder considering the two excellent parents. I’ve bred with it a little bit.

FREDDY MENGE’S CRABBY LADY: I have not fruited this yet, but it’s a cross between Wickson and Lady Williams. Freddy says it has some of that wickson savory character. It is late, like Lady Williams, but he says it’s better and smaller. The few fruits I got one year cracked when the fall rains came.

STRATEGY

First off, we need to talk about, share and grow these apples more. Having a name to call them by will help, so use the term savory apples as a place to park them.

As far as breeding strategies, the first step is growing more first generation crosses with other good apples. I have no reason to doubt that this approach will yield some very good apples without multi-generational breeding. So will planting open pollinated seeds of them. As the best of those first generation crosses fruit and prove out, we can start making second gen crosses toward desired ends. It certainly would be a good idea to work in some disease resistance genes into the mix here and there. Sweet sixteen, William’s Pride and Gold Rush are all very scab resistant here. I’ve seen Wickson scab free in a year when other apples were very scabby and I’ve seen it get scab in a year when other apples weren’t. I don’t know what’s up with that, but I have a feeling this line is scabby in general, so best put some scab resistance in there. I’ve already made crosses along these lines with Sweet 16 and William’s Pride. Given the excellent characteristics and disease resistance of William’s Pride, and my success using it with Vixen, it seems like an obvious choice to continue with.

For second generation breeding, I’m already in that phase, putting cherub onto BITE ME!, Amberwine, King Wickson and Wickson. I’ll continue making similar crosses in both directions as new seedlings fruit and prove to have the characteristic. My approach to breeding is intentionally unsophisticated, so that’s about it. But it will work if the numbers are high enough. My crosses of Grenadine x Wickson from 2011 have been the most disappointing, with no umami and generally low quality. Sugarwood is the one I can think of with noticeable Umami, but it’s not strong.

I have a lot more of these crosses grafted out and many will fruit not too long from now. This is one of the aspects of the project I’m most excited about. The world needs more of these apples, and more need to grow and try them. Someday, we will probably see these apples in stores being appreciated by a wider audience. I hope so. All because Albert Etter took a chance on some primitive crab genetics. Also because small experimenters like Freddy Menge and myself, and maybe you ;), are willing to take the years to grow out more and find out what happens. Lets move these genes forward, they are only just beginning to show their potential.