Home › The Principles of Cookery › Apple Cheese and Cream
Apple Cheese and Cream
Stew to a thick pulp two pounds of apples, one pound of sugar, a little chopped lemon-rind, and half a pint of water. Put it into a mould, and when stiff, turn it out, and pour round it a little custard made of two cupfuls of new milk, the rind of a lemon, the yolk of an egg, and a tea-spoonful of ground rice, mixed together, and boiled for a few minutes. Time to boil, five minutes. Sufficient for four or five persons. Probable cost, 1s. 6d.
A stiff apple paste turned out of a mould and ringed with a thin pouring custard. Nothing here is difficult, but the set depends entirely on how far you reduce the fruit.
- The hinge: cook it dryThere is no gelatine or egg in the apple mixture, so it sets on pectin and evaporated water alone. Stew it well past the point where it looks done, until a spoon dragged across the pan leaves a track that holds for a second or two; this can take 45 minutes to an hour over low heat, with stirring near the end to stop it catching.
- "Apple cheese"No dairy is involved. In nineteenth-century usage a fruit "cheese" is a paste reduced until it is firm enough to slice, as in damson cheese or Spanish membrillo. It is the same family as fruit butter, only cooked further.
- Choose a cooking appleBramleys, or any tart apple that collapses, will pulp and set far better than a dessert variety. Two pounds is roughly 900 g; the recipe does not say whether that weight is whole or prepared fruit, so allow extra if you are weighing before peeling and coring.
- Imperial measuresHalf a pint here is the Imperial half-pint, 10 fl oz or about 285 ml. Two cupfuls of milk for the custard is around 450-475 ml; the book's cup is not standardised, so treat it as generous rather than exact.
- New milkMilk fresh from the cow, unskimmed and not yet soured. Whole milk is the right substitute; a splash of single cream makes the custard closer to what a Victorian cook would have had.
- The custardOne yolk and a teaspoon of ground rice in two cupfuls of milk make a thin pouring custard rather than a set one. Whisk the rice into the cold milk before heating or it will lump. Starch of this kind helps keep a yolk from curdling, which is presumably why the original can call for five minutes' boiling; even so, keep it at a bare simmer and stir constantly.
- Lemon rindPare it in strips with no white pith, infuse it in the hot milk, then lift it out before serving. In the apple pulp the rind is chopped and stays in, so mince it very fine or it will read as bitter shards in a smooth paste.
- Moulding and turning outRinse the mould with cold water and do not grease it. Chill several hours, ideally overnight. If it clings, dip the mould to the rim in hot water for a count of five.
- YieldFour or five as written, as a light pudding. The apple cheese itself keeps a week covered in the refrigerator; make the custard the day you serve it.
Fruit cheeses belong to the preserving side of the English kitchen rather than the pastry side: they were a way of turning a glut into something that would keep in a mould or a shallow crock, cut into squares, and be eaten with cream or alongside cold meat. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery belongs to a long-running series of Cassell cookery dictionaries issued from the later nineteenth century onward, at a period when quince, damson and apple cheeses were still routine autumn work in households with a tree or an orchard connection, and the book's habit of costing each dish — 1s 6d here — suits a middle-class household budgeting for a cook. The addition of a poured custard is what moves this out of the store cupboard and onto the table as a dinner sweet; setting a moulded shape in a moat of thin custard was a common Victorian presentation, used for everything from blancmange to boiled puddings, and survives in the English habit of drowning things in custard to this day.