Apple Sauce
Pare, core and cut in quarters apples that do not cut to pieces easily, and put on to stew in cold water with plenty of sugar. Cover close and stew an hour or more. The addition of the sugar at first preserves the pieces whole. If they are preferred finely mashed, add sugar after they are done.
A two-line method that rests on one piece of chemistry: sugar added at the start keeps the quarters intact. Everything else is a matter of choosing the right apple and not drowning it.
- Sugar first, and whyCooking the fruit in a sugared liquid slows the breakdown of pectin and helps the quarters hold their shape through a long stew. Withhold it and the fruit collapses, which is what the recipe tells you to do if you want a mashed sauce.
- Apples that holdThe book asks for apples "that do not cut to pieces easily" — a firm, dense variety. Braeburn, Pink Lady or Northern Spy hold their quarters reasonably well; McIntosh and Bramley are the ones to use when you want the fruit to fall apart.
- How much waterNone is specified. Half a cup to a pound of fruit is enough for a covered pan on low heat; the apples release a good deal of their own liquid. Too much water and you finish with poached apples in syrup rather than sauce.
- How much sugar"Plenty" is not a measurement. Start at 2 to 3 tablespoons per pound of apples and taste at the end; many modern dessert varieties are sweeter than the apples a nineteenth-century farm kitchen would have had to hand.
- The hourAn hour is right for whole quarters kept firm over a very low flame, not a rolling simmer. If you are after mashed sauce with no sugar in the pot, 20 to 30 minutes will bring the fruit down.
- Cover closeA tight lid is doing the work of steam here. With a loose lid the pan runs dry over an hour and the sugar catches and scorches on the bottom; check once or twice and add a splash of water if needed.
- YieldTwo pounds of apples, about six medium, gives roughly three cups. It keeps about a week refrigerated.
Buckeye Cookery came out of Ohio farm households in the 1870s, where apples were not a garnish but a staple carried through the winter in cellars and dried strings. The recipe draws a distinction between quarters held whole and fruit finely mashed. The trick of adding sugar at the outset to keep fruit from breaking up was common kitchen knowledge well before anyone described pectin in chemical terms, and it is still the reason a sugared fruit compote holds while an unsugared one pur"es itself.