"cat-head" = large apple

[Laurence Horn]

At 5:12 PM -0400 9/10/10, George Thompson wrote:
>Four apples, called cat-head were exhibited last week to the editor
>of the Portland Advertiser weighing a pound each.
>Morning Courier & New-York Enquirer, October 17, 1832, p. 2, col. 3
>
>Neither OED nor DARE has cat-head is this sense.
>
>GAT
>
Seems to have been around earlier too:
In _America's founding food: : the story of New England cooking_, by
Keith W. F. Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald (2004, p. 205)
"Aunty Phillis," his grandfather's cook, had made apple dumplings
"with a thin crust, and a cat-head apple quartered and cored, in each
of them, as big as a good sized pumpkin. For Phillis used to say
there was 'nothing on airth she so 'spised as an apple dumpling with
a crust as thick and hard as a jonny-cake* board, with no cat-head in
it.'"

* [yes, this is in Rhode Island, set in the late 19th c.--LH]

And if you're wondering how to refer to a cat-head apple in Welsh,
that's (more or less) easily done:

Afal pryd y gwr - the cat-head apple ; glory of the west.
(Geiriadur cenhedlaethol cymraeg a saesneg: A national dictionary of
the Welsh language (1891), Robert John Pryse, Vol. I, Page 46) [it's
in the earlier 1852 edition too]

There seem to be a bunch of other instances of "cat('s) head apples"
from the 19th c. (or slightly earlier), but our own cats (dating back
to the late 20th c.) were of no help in narrowing down the intended
reference.  Better safe than sorry, they seemed to be thinking.

LH

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