Gravensteins are the first pie apples to ripen; tasty but wet. I use Baldwins, Northern Spies, and RI Greenings. Off season, when I have to use supermarket apples, I use Cortlands. Sometimes I mix apple varieties in a pie. When I was a girl in rural upstate New York sixty years ago, "pie apples" meant Greenings, the only cooking variety grown in local orchards.

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