A variety of yellow cooking apple raised in Yorkshire. It is a late-season variety which is harvested from mid-October, is stored and is at its best between November and January.
A medium-sized, round English dessert apple, excellent for cooking. It is dull-flavoured if picked too early, but otherwise richly aromatic, with lovely russeted skin and crisp, juicy, creamy, sweet yellow flesh when ripe. This is one of the great eating apples. It was grown by Richard Cox, a retired brewer and besotted gardener, who grew the first tree from the pip of a Ribston Pippin in 1826. The new apple would never have been known outside Slough without the help of Joseph Paxton, the Duke of Devonshire's gardener, who became first president of the British Pomological Society, and sent Cox graft-wood all over the country. It was awarded the Royal Horticultural Society First Class Certificate in 1962. It is a late-season apple variety, harvested late-September to early-October in South-East England, is stored and is at its best from mid-October to January. This apple grows everywhere, and with more success than it does in England where it has little disease resistance.
A large all rounder apple, ribbed and irregular, raised in about 1825 by Richard Cox of Colnbrook Lawn, Slough, Buckinghamshire, and introduced by Mr Smale, Nurseryman, Colnbrook circa 1850. Said to be a seedling of Ribston Pippin, it has a very smooth, greasy skin, coloured pale greenish-yellow to yellow and up to three-quarters flushed orange red with fairly broad broken bright red stripes. The flesh is white, soft, juicy, and of a fine flavour. Crisp but quite sharp when eaten fresh and of fine flavour when cooked. Does not break up completely when cooked. Makes a good baked apple..
The default crab differs from country to country. The most common type of crab caught commercially in northern Europe is a large clawed variety known as the "edible crab" measuring as much as 20 cm (8”) across. In the South you are more likely to find the delicious spider crab, which can be great wanderer, moving tens, if not hundreds, of miles during a year from feeding to spawning grounds. Spider crabs only provide meat from the legs but it is of very high quality. Also commoner in the south are soup crabs such as shore, furry or swimming crabs. In the US the crab commonly refers to the Dungeness crab on the Pacific coast or the blue crab, often in its soft-shelled state, in the East.
The crab apple is a small, tart fruit of the wild apple tree. Makes good jellies to accompany meats.
Cobia. These fish are found in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and are pelagic. Feeding mainly on crabs and small squid, this adds to the flavour of their own, firmly-textured flesh. They are typically served in the form of grilled or poached fillets.
Crab sticks are those mysterious square sticks with a red skin, looking oddly like rhubarb, which contain very little in the way of crab, but impart its flavour. In fact they were patented by a Japanese company, the Sugiyo Co Ltd, in 1973 under the name of Kanikama. Legal restrictions prevented them from continuing to be marketed as ‘crab sticks’ in the event of them containing no crab meat, and so they were sold as any of Krab Sticks, Ocean Sticks, Sea Legs or Imitation Crab Sticks.
Crackling was the bit we all fought over as children when the roast pork came out of the oven on Sunday, with Two-Way Family Favourites on the radio. It is the skin of the joint, scored into strips before it is cooked. With the addition of a little salt and a lot of heat, as the joint roasts the skin turns into strips of crisp, golden, bubbling crackling. Oh for the day when no-one ever discussed how bad these things might be for health and we charged in from the garden with cold cold fingers and were given a piece of crackling to crunch until the meat had been carved, the apple sauce dished out and the roast potatoes and parsnips placed on the table in great tureens.
