Eating the history of apples
Baked apples
Apples are delicious, and you can eat them lots of different ways. The easiest way is just to eat a raw apple in your hand (or, if you have braces, slice it up into sections!). Eating the foods people ate long ago is one way of doing history.
Where do apples come from?
Central Asian food
Central Asia projects
All our Central Asia articles
Baked apple recipe
But it’s also very easy to make baked apples in the microwave. Just cut an apple into bite-size pieces and throw away the seeds and the core. Put the pieces in a bowl and add a couple of pats of butter.
Where does butter come from?
Cinnamon and ancient India
History of sugar
Now sprinkle a little cinnamon and sugar on top of the apple pieces, and put the bowl in the microwave on full power for about three minutes. The apple should be soft and hot and delicious! A good healthy dessert.
Why cinnamon, butter and sugar?
Like apples, cinnamon, butter, and sugar also come from Central Asia. So they were available to eat together. They seem natural that way.
Try different kinds of apples to see what you like best – Granny Smiths are very different from Pink Ladies!
More about apples
More about cinnamon
Bibliography and further reading about apples:
Food, by Fiona MacDonald and others (2001). For kids, facts about food from all over the world. A little preachy.
Food in Antiquity: A Survey of the Diet of Early Peoples, by Don and Patricia Brothwell (1998). Pretty specialized, but the book tells you where foods came from, and how they got to other places, and what people ate in antiquity. Not just Europe, either!
Food: A Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present, by Jean Louis Flandrin, Massimo Montanari, Albert Sonnenfeld. (1996). Hard going because it is translated from French, but Flandrin was one of the world’s great food historians.
