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Apple Cream
Peel three pounds of apples, remove the cores, and cut them in thin slices. Put them into a saucepan with half a pound of crushed sugar, the rind of a lemon finely shred, half an ounce of ground ginger, and four table-spoonfuls of red wine. Let them simmer until they are soft enough to press through a sieve, then put them in a dish, and allow them to cool. Boil a quart of cream or new milk, with some nutmeg, and add the apples to it, beating all thoroughly together. Time to simmer, about half an hour. Probable cost, 1s. 2d., if made with milk. Sufficient for eight persons.
A Victorian apple fool in all but name: spiced apple purée let down with boiled cream or milk. Two things in the original need attention before you cook — the ginger is heavy-handed by modern taste, and hot dairy meeting acid fruit will curdle if you rush it.
- The gingerHalf an ounce of ground ginger is roughly two and a half to three tablespoons, enough to make three pounds of apples fiercely hot. Start with two teaspoons and add more once the fruit has softened and you can taste it.
- Combine warm, not hot to coldBeating a quart of just-boiled cream into cold apple purée invites splitting, and the fruit acid makes it likelier. Let the boiled cream cool to lukewarm, then whisk the purée in gradually, or beat the purée into the cream off the heat a spoonful at a time.
- "New milk" and creamNew milk means fresh whole milk, unskimmed and unhomogenised. Whole milk works but sets up much thinner; single or light cream gives the texture the recipe is aiming at, and heavy cream makes it very rich indeed.
- "Crushed sugar"Loaf sugar broken down small — use ordinary granulated. Half a pound is a scant cup and a quarter, which is on the sweet side for modern eating apples; with Bramleys or another sharp cooking apple it is about right.
- Apples and yieldThree pounds of apples is about six to eight large ones, giving perhaps a quart of purée after sieving. Divided the eight ways the recipe directs, the servings are generous.
- Pressing through a sieveA food mill or a coarse sieve is what is wanted here — it catches the shredded lemon rind and any fibre. A blender will do it but gives a slicker, less interesting texture.
- The wineFour tablespoons of red wine lend a little colour and tannin; port or a fruity red both work. It is not structural, and the dish survives leaving it out.
- ServingChill thoroughly and serve in glasses with a thin wafer or sponge finger. The 1s. 2d. costing is a period detail, not a guide.
Apple cream belongs to the long English family of fruit fools and creams — sieved cooked fruit slackened with cream or milk — that runs from the seventeenth century through to the trifles and syllabubs of the Victorian table. Cassell's, compiled in the 1870s and 80s as an alphabetical household reference rather than a chef's book, prices nearly every entry, and here reckons that a quart of milk and three pounds of apples would feed eight for fourteen pence. Dried spice was cheap and widely available by then, and English fruit puddings of the period were often seasoned more strongly than they would be now.