As a child, I was a picky eater. When I was an infant and starting on solid food, I didn’t seem to like anything. But I did like applesauce. My mom tells me she would use a bit of applesauce to hide whatever else was on the spoon, whence derives the applesauce habit I had as a child.

I’m not kidding when I say I had an applesauce habit. Every evening at dinner, to the left of my plate, sat a small bowl of applesauce and I would dip every forkful of whatever meat was for dinner into the applesauce before eating it. Of course people have heard of pork with applesauce, but this was, truly every single meat. Even fish. Even my grandmother’s veal Parmesan with tomato sauce and mozzarella. (Yes, I realize that sounds like a strange combination, and I haven’t had it in years, but it’s one of those embedded taste memories I can still call to mind with utmost clarity.)

Also as a child, my father worked in the US Attorney’s, office, Southern District of New York, under Robert Morganthau. Bob Morganthau’s family owned an apple orchard not too far north of NYC, and every fall he would hold a party at the orchard for everyone who had worked for him and their families. There were endless hot dogs and hamburgers, games of tag, touch football, and more, and hay rides out to the apple trees where we could pick as many apples as we wanted. Most families would head for their cars with perhaps 2 or 3 bags of apples. We, on the other hand, would fill the ‘wayback’ of our station wagon with bags full of apples.

Nena, my mother’s mother, knew my applesauce habit, and also was a phenomenal cook. We would bring her all the apples and she would keep them on her porch as she worked through bag after bag, making enough applesauce for me to eat through the entire year, until the next picnic. She was such a good cook, that in our New York City apartment, in the closet in my sister’s and my room, my parents had put a small chest freezer to keep the applesauce and other homemade recipes from Nena, such as soups and stews.

As I got older, I once asked Nena to share her applesauce recipe. As so often happens with a cook like she was, she had no recipe to offer. It was just something she knew how to do. Years later, after she had died, I set out to see if I could figure out what she did. I knew hers always turned out pink, and the memory of the taste is, of course, burnished in my memory. I learn from research that cooking the apples with the skin will give applesauce a lovely pink hue, and that a food mill will easily purée the applesauce while keeping the skins out.

Though it may not be Nena’s exact recipe, it tastes just as I remember!

Nena’s Pink Applesauce

Makes about 6 cups

3-4 pounds apples, preferably MacIntosh, cored and cut into large chunks
1 cup water
½ cup brown sugar
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
2-3 cinnamon sticks

Place all the ingredients into a large pot or Dutch oven. Bring to a strong simmer, stirring occasionally to combine the ingredients. Cover and allow to simmer for about 15-20 minutes, stirring frequently to keep anything from sticking. Once all the apple pieces are all soft, remove from the heat and cool slightly, for 5-10 minutes.

Remove cinnamon sticks. Purée the applesauce in batches, using the disk with middle-sized holes on food mill, set over a large bowl. Turn the food mill back and forth, both directions, to get as much through the disk as possible. The applesauce will go through the holes into the bowl, and whenever too many skins are on the top, scoop them out before adding another batch of cooked apples.

Freeze in containers to use throughout the year!

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Nena’s Pink Applesauce