For The Best Bakery-Style Tarts Julia Child Reached For These Types Of Apples

Apples that are crisp and juicy when they're raw, don't necessarily make the best desserts. When it comes to baking with apples, some types of apples are undoubtedly better than others. To ensure your next batch of apple tarts (or crisp, or pie) doesn't degrade into a mushy disaster in the oven, consider culinary icon Julia Child's favorite types of apples for baking.

In an episode of "The French Chef," the television cooking series hosted by Child, she explained her top produce choices to make tarte Tatin, an upside-down French apple tart. "Three very good apples are Golden Delicious, Rome Beauty, and York Imperial, and it depends really on where you live whether you can get these apples," Child explained. She adds that she also enjoys Baldwin, Northern Spy, and Cortland apples (which she used for the tart), as well as canned Greening, Newton, or Monroe apples.

Child adds that many of these specialty apples are harder to find at the supermarket, depending on where you live. Rome Beauty, Cortland, and Monroe apples are now primarily available in New York. Greenings and Baldwin apples hail from New England. Northern Spy and York Imperial apples are mainly grown in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, respectively, while Newtown apples are found in the Northeast, California, the Pacific Northwest, and Canada. As for Golden Delicious apples, they are pretty ubiquitous.

Julia Child fans spoke to the feasibility of finding the beloved TV host's top-recommended apples. "It helps if you live in a state that grows a lot of apples ... Some are expensive and not nearly as bountiful a display as the more popular modern varieties, but I snap 'em up whenever they're available," one viewer commented on the YouTube video of Child making a tarte Tatin on "The French Chef." Another commenter claimed, "You can get all these varieties at farmers' markets in the Northeast." If you're struggling to locate these apples where you live, Golden Delicious is also a good option.

While Child gave plenty of recommendations for the best apples to bake with, she also noted which ones to avoid. "You don't want to get a mushy kind of an apple, like a Gravenstein or a McIntosh, because they just turn into nothing and they're much too watery," Child said in the clip. Instead of baking with Gravensteins, use them for cider, apple butter, or sauce. McIntosh apples are also good for apple butter, applesauce, and raw applications.

Once you've taken Child's best cooking tips to the produce section, you're ready to bake. Her suggestions for baking apples are useful to make a classic French apple tart, but that's not all. Child's recs apply to other apple desserts too, like easy apple pie and apple turnovers.