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If any of our apples has a fan club, it’s the Pink Pearl! This tart, early-season apple has a cream-colored, lightly blushed skin. Underneath that demure exterior, though, the Pink Pearl lives up to its name: its flesh is shocking pink! Some fruit will be almost solidly pink inside; others have white flesh mottled and streaked with bright pink.

The Pink Pearl is the best-known and most renowned of the many pink-fleshed apples bred by Albert Etter in the 1920s through the 1940s. Starting with a Midwestern variety dubbed Surprise* for the reddish-pink flesh hidden under its dull green-yellow skin, Etter bred and planted hundreds of experimental varieties on his remote Northern California homestead. By 1945, his business partner registered a plant patent for Etter’s most promising development, the Pink Pearl, which boasted a translucent skin, an elegantly tapered shape with rounded shoulders and a delectable bright pink flesh.

Aficionados of this special apple often refer to the fruit’s raspberry-like flavor notes, perhaps due to the red anthocyanin compounds that give the Pink Pearl its distinctive pink color. Pink Pearl makes a delicious pink applesauce and a tart, refreshing fresh juice or cider. However, it doesn’t store well either on or off the tree, so enjoy it now during its very brief season. When it’s gone, it’s gone!

*Surprise, which arrived in the American Midwest from Europe in the 1830s, is believed to be a descendent of a rare, red-fleshed Central Asian apple known as malus Niedzwetskyana, or Niedzwetsky’s apple.