The "right fruit" usually depends on personal tastes plus the application: eating whole fruit, juice/fermented juice, preserves, baking, accent flavor in a salad. There are a lot of reasons that things can end up in the dustbin of history other than taste in one circumstance.
Great point. When I was growing up, my parents property was subdivided from a large old farm and orchard that had been farmed from the Dutch colonial era. We had apple trees that everyone considered junk/crabapples. (Although my mom made pie with them)
Later, we learned they are a well regarded heirloom for cider and other alcohol making purposes! Cider was a big thing in the Early 1900s and has made a resurgence.
Cider was huge, the main reason to plant an orchard. IIRC selling the idea of apples as a healthy thing to eat (and perhaps even apple pie as patriotic) was a clever marketing "pivot" under prohibition -- orchards were otherwise headed the way of the brewers & distilleries.
