This recipe was featured in our social media series, "Flavors of the Mountain Past."
Past Southern Appalachians took advantage of the region's diverse apple tree varieties. A recipe they may have made is baked apple pudding, which calls for a dozen apples and eight eggs!
Western North Carolinians used apples in many recipes, like apple butter, apple sauce, dried apples, and even pickled apples for the winter. They may have eaten Mountain Boomers—a prized heirloom apple popular in North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia in the early 1900s. Also called “Seek No Further,” the Virginia State Horticultural Society first described the fruit in 1900 as a large to very large apple with greenish-yellow skin. Today, Mountain Boomers only grow at small heirloom farms in the High Country counties of Avery and Watauga.
Images are courtesy of DNCR Historic Sites Apple Index & Sarah Rutledge’s 1847 Book "The Carolina Housewife," p. 12.