In the run up to World Apple Day on Tuesday, Dave McCormick of Incredible Edible Barnet focuses on core values

On a warm Saturday morning in late September 2025, more than 60 people aged from under 6 to over 60 came together to celebrate everything appley.

Organised by Incredible Edible Barnet the event, held at the St John’s United Reformed Church community garden in New Barnet, included apple pressing, apple tasting, apple talks, apple cake and bug hunts to check out our pollinating insects without which we would have no apples, pears and other fruits.

We are what we eat 

Celebrating apples brought back happy apple memories – often about childhood and family.

“When I was little, my Great Aunt would collect cooking apples from the garden and make apple pies with cloves in for us all  –  I remember picking them out of my mouth and thinking they were weird.”

“Mum would quarter apples and take the pips out and make me eat them (the apples not the pips).”

“My Mum made lovely Eve’s Pudding – a Victoria sponge cake with apples.”

“My Dad gives me bags full of Bramleys every Autumn which my family work our way through – we eat apples for weeks on end!”

“With my son and mother, washing, cutting out the bad bits and pressing using a home made press using a car jack.”

“Apples make me think of my great grandmother’s apple cake and my mum’s apple crumble. My dad now makes apple cider.”

“I remember my mum’s apple pie and custard which we would have on a Sunday. Also going scrumping in the vicarage garden of our Church. Unbeknown to us we were spied upon by the Vicar’s wife! Fortunately, she found it very amusing but were we embarrassed ? Oh yes!”

“Earliest memories are of helping my mum to make apple butter with the discovery apple as from my garden. It was a lovely old tree because the area in Enfield was an orchard before the houses were built in the 1930s.”

“My parents’ garden (in Barnet next door to the Incredible Edible community garden) had an apple tree and my task was to harvest the apples then wrap them in newspaper and box them up to be kept in the garage (they would last months). My mum made lovely baked apples (cored cooking apple filled with a mix of dried fruit/ground ginger/allspice and brown sugar then baked in the oven).!

“My mum put mincemeat in the baked apples.”

Apple recipe suggestions

• Apple Butter https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/apple_butter_53249
• Apple Cake https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/dorset_apple_cake_37804
• Apple Crumble https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/applecrumble_2971
• Apple Pie https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/perfect_apple_pie_73735
• Baked Apples https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/easy_baked_apples_with_65172
• Eve’s Pudding https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/evespudding_83911

Apple Superpowers

Apples have superpowers that make them good for our health and for the health of the environment

Healthy People

Apples are a very healthy food being high in vitamin C, B-6, riboflavin, thiamin and disease-fighting antioxidants and phytonutrients. They contain no fat, sodium or cholesterol and are a good source of fibre. They also offer good levels of minerals such as calcium, potassium and phosphorus.

Consuming apples regularly may reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and certain cancers, while also aiding in weight management due to their high fibre and water content which promote fullness. The skin of the apple is particularly rich in these protective compounds, making it beneficial to eat the whole fruit.  

Healthy Nature

Apple trees absorb carbon dioxide, promote soil stability and reduce erosion, provide a habitat for various wildlife species, and offer a local food source for people and birds and small mammals. For a good crop, apples need pollen from a different cultivar (type of apple tree) that blossoms at the same time. The blossom attracts pollinators (often bees) to move the pollen from one flower to another. 

Planting apple trees can contribute to a more sustainable, local food system, reducing the need for long-distance transportation of fruit – reducing costs and environmental impacts.

Apple trees can help filter pollutants from the air, help with storm water management and reduce flooding in urban areas.

How Apples Conquered the World

The ancestor of the cultivated apples we eat today is Malus sieversii, a wild apple that grew in “apple forests” near the city of Almaty in Kazakhstan. The name Almaty was previously recorded as “Alma-Ata” which translated as “Father of the Apples”. 

Apple cultivation began 4,000 to 10,000 years ago in the mountains of Central Asia, where the wild apple Malus sieversii was domesticated. Trees spread to Syria (probable due to seed dispersal by birds and animals) then along the Silk Road.

Hybridization and cross-pollination with European crab apples developed new varieties, the Romans introduced apples to Britain, and eventually, European colonists brought them to North America where around the turn of the 19^th century John Chapman, also known as “Johnny Appleseed”, introduced trees grown with apple seeds to large parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and the Canadian province of Ontario, as well as the northern counties of West Virginia.

Wild apples were abundant in China and Chinese soft apples have been cultivated as dessert apples for more than 2,000 years. In the 1870’s, John Nevius, a Presbyterian missionary, introduced western cultivated apples that had superior shape, taste, colour, and storability compared to the native Chinese apples. Their popularity grew and by 2023, China was responsible for 51% of world apple production with the United States a distant second with 5%.

Cultivation of apples enabled varieties being bred that are suitable for different uses such as eating cooking, baking and production of juice, cider and vinegar. After centuries of selection and breeding of apples there are now over 7,500 cultivars (apple varieties) grown worldwide, including 2,100 English varieties, which all fall under the collective grouping of Latin name: Malus domestica.

Symbolism

Apples have symbolic meaning in many cultures and communities. 

In ancient Greece and Rome, apples were sacred to goddesses of love, such as Aphrodite and Venus, and giving an apple was a token of love and desire. In Celtic mythology, apples were considered the “fruit of the gods,” symbolizing healing, wholeness, and a deep connection with nature. In Norse mythology, apples appear as symbols of fertility.

Though the forbidden fruit of Eden in the Book of Genesis is not identified, popular Christian tradition has held that it was an apple that Eve coaxed Adam to share with her. 

In China gifting apples is a way to wish peace and safety.

Dipping apples in honey is a significant Jewish tradition for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, symbolizing a prayer for a “good and sweet year” ahead. The custom involves a blessing for a sweet year and then eating a slice of apple dipped in honey. Honey represents abundance and blessing, while the apple symbolizes the hope for a renewal of the year.

The proverb, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”, addressing the supposed health benefits of the fruit, has been traced to 19th-century Wales, where the original phrase was “Eat an apple on going to bed, and you’ll keep the doctor from earning his bread”.

Giving a teacher an apple is a symbolic gesture symbolizing appreciation, knowledge, and support, especially in times when families couldn’t afford to pay teachers with money.

As American as Apple Pie?

A recipe for Apple pie can be found in a 1381 work by Geoffrey Chaucer which listed the ingredients as good apples, good spices, figs, raisins and pears cased in a sugarless pastry shell known as a  cofyn with saffron used for colouring the pie filling.

In the 17th century, European settlers took apple pie recipes to North America. As sugar became more widely available, the savory, sugarless British pies were fused with the traditional strudels of German immigrants to make the sweet and flaky combination that became the America Apple Pie.

Tarte aux pommes, tarte tatin, apple strudel, five spice apple pie, and apple turnover provide examples of cultural differences in apple pies.

From Kazakhstan to Barnet  seems to have been an incredible (edible) apple journey. With our changing climate, apples may have a significant role to play helping keep us, and the natural environment, healthy.

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