Peel and core the apples and fill the space with currants. Sprinkle with sugar, cinnamon and grated lemon peel, and cover each apple with a rich pie-paste. Lay on a well-buttered pie-dish and let bake until done. Serve with wine sauce.
A dumpling in the older sense: a whole apple wrapped in pastry and baked, not a boiled suet ball. The original gives no quantities, oven heat or time, so the notes below fill in what a modern cook needs.
- Quantities are yours to setNothing is specified. Reckon on one medium apple per person and about 4 oz (115 g) of pastry per apple, plus a teaspoon of sugar and a pinch of cinnamon in each cavity.
- Currants means dried currantsCurrants here almost certainly means dried currants -- the dried Zante or Black Corinth grape -- rather than fresh red or black currants from the bush, though the original does not say so. Plump them in hot water or a little wine for ten minutes and drain, or they will draw moisture out of the apple and stay hard.
- Rich pie-pasteIn a book of this period that means a short crust with a high proportion of butter or lard, not puff pastry. Roll it about 1/8 inch thick and cut squares large enough to bring the four corners up over the top of the apple.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Bake at 400F (200C) for the first 15 minutes to set and colour the pastry, then drop to 350F (175C) for another 30 to 40 minutes until a skewer slides through the apple without resistance.
- Choose a firm appleAn apple that holds its shape is best here, since the fruit is baked whole inside a sealed case. Bramley tends to collapse to a puree; Granny Smith, Braeburn or a firm russet will generally hold together better.
- Seal and steamPinch the pastry seams properly and set the dumplings seam-side down, well spaced, or escaping juice will glue them to the dish. A small vent in the top lets steam out and keeps the crust from splitting.
- Wine sauceThe period sauce is generally butter, sugar and wine, sometimes thickened, flavoured with sherry, madeira or a light red wine and served warm. A hard sauce does much the same job.
- Yield and servingOne dumpling per person, served hot and soon after it leaves the oven. The pastry softens quickly once the apple's steam works into it.
Apples baked whole in pastry are common to most of northern and central Europe, and the labelling of this one as "Polish" says more about the format of the book than about any documented Polish original: the book assigns a country to each day of the year, and the national tags are often loose. Poland has its own tradition of baked and stuffed apples, often with raisins, honey and cinnamon. What marks this version as belonging to its period is the wine sauce, a standard accompaniment to boiled and baked puddings in English and American cookery from the eighteenth century onward, and the assumption that the reader already knows how to make a rich pie-paste without being told.