Comparing Oranges and Apples

I am an annoyed amateur cultural anthropologist.

Here I had this great idea for an essay / article / story / epic rant, and it turns out I've been wrong for freaking decades.

When I was a kid, I collected superstitions and folk beliefs like others collect stamps. I honestly don't know why; I wasn't a terribly superstitious kid, though I have pareidolia in double spades. (Go cloud watching with me sometime. Double dare you.) To this day I love odd occult things, like witch's bottles and curse tablets and evil eye jewelry and amulets. To me they speak of ways to allay fears, or explain cultural habits that are usually stored deep in the psyche. Or both. Why not both? We humans are simple and complex at the same time, and beliefs layered on tradition layered on survival skills cook up the strangest solutions on the wackiest of days.

So the orange peel thing really bugged me.

Only, it turns out it wasn't an orange peel. It was an apple peel! And so my carefully-reasoned theory goes flying out the window, and I'm a grumpy puppy with a half-formed insight that may or may not go anywhere.

Have you ever heard about the apple peel thing? Allegedly, if you peel an apple and you take it off the flesh in one complete piece, you can throw it in the fire and it will curl into the initial of the person you're going to marry.

I have sooooo many problems with this.

First - dangit, it's just so much easier to do with orange peels. I do it all the time. For some reason, blood orange season these past two years has gone months beyond its regular norm, and I'm buying one or two bags a week at the local market and reveling in the glory of sweet-sour tangy goodness. Somewhere along the way, my brain switched "orange" for "apple," and when I went back to make sure I had the superstition correct, it seems I was wrong. I hate being wrong. Apple peels, on the other hand, involve a sharp edge and a steady hand. It takes a lot longer, a lot more concentration, and smooth steady pressure. In those immortal words, I ain't got time for that.

Second - food waste is a modern luxury for the middle and lower classes. Having enough food to waste edible bits is a post-Elizabethan era mindset, coupled with coming to the New World and its amazing stores of resources. Both orange and apple peels are edible, and you'd better believe any unmarried female still living in her parents' household would have been punished severely for such food wastage. I still nibble the pith from my blood oranges while my husband fastidiously peels it all off, and I've been known to save up skins and make candied orange peel. I've also been known to eat citrus like I eat my apples, peel included. My mother remembers getting an orange - ONE - in her Christmas stocking as a child, and it was a huge treat.

Third - well, orange peels don't really "burn and curl." They're too thick, and there's a lot of moisture in a fresh peel. Apple peels, on the other hand, are thin and hard little suckers, especially in the older varieties of apples. You need a thick skin to survive in the wild into winter, to get those seeds scattered properly. Selective breeding has made it thinner, but even some modern varieties have thick skins that thin over time if left to age properly. Pink Lady comes to mind - stick those things in the back of the fridge for three months, and then they're ready to eat! I've never done this experiment, throwing an apple peel into a fire and watching it burn. I'd like to now, since thinking about this has gotten me re-interested in the subject.

Was it a sneaky way to get the daughters helping you make pies for the holidays be super careful when peeling the apples for them? Was it a method for upper-class ladies to entertain themselves, while scandalizing the servants with conspicuous food wastage, and encouraging their friends to do the same? Was a bad peeler - or someone who really hated the texture of apple peel in their food - getting rid of evidence, and came up with a pretty lie to cover the fact that apple peels don't burn as fast as you'd like them to? Or did the magic actually work for someone? Was someone drunk on fresh fermented cider, and just made it up? I wish I knew where some of these thoughts originated, to track it down with my handy time machine in a spare moment...

(No, I don't. I actually have a list of Why Not To Give Me a Time Machine, and the list is extensive. My friends have read it, and while they agree with many of the things I'd change, they are under oath by the Time Police Council to Never Never Never give me the time machine. They know why. Ask them sometime.)