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Apple Gateau
Boil one pound of loaf sugar in half a pint of water till it makes a rich syrup. Peel, core, and slice very thinly two pounds of Nonpareil, or any other nicely-flavoured apples which will pulp easily. Boil in the syrup with the rind and juice of a lemon until stiff. Pour the mixture into a mould, and the following day turn it out and serve with custard. Time, about two hours. Probable cost, 10d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
This is a set apple paste — closer to membrillo than to a cake — relying on the apples' own pectin and a heavy sugar load to hold its shape. The whole success of it lies in cooking the pulp far past the point most cooks would call done.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold in hard cones, broken up and crushed before use. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct replacement, weight for weight: one pound is about 2¼ cups.
- Half a pint of waterAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, so about 1¼ US cups. The syrup should be boiled only until clear and slightly thickened, not to a candy stage.
- Nonpareil applesAn old English dessert apple, now rare. Choose any variety that collapses readily and tastes sharp — Bramley, McIntosh or Cortland pulp well and bring enough acid to help the set.
- "Until stiff" is the hingeThe mixture must be reduced until a spoon drawn across the pan bottom leaves a track that holds for a second or two. Undercooked, it will slump when turned out. Expect the full two hours, on low heat, stirred often — the sugar concentration makes it catch and scorch easily toward the end.
- The mouldRinse the mould with cold water and leave it wet, or brush it very lightly with a flavourless oil; the paste shrinks a little as it cools and should release without much trouble.
- Overnight settingThe instruction to leave it until the following day is not padding. The paste needs several hours in a cool place to firm fully; turned out warm it will not hold the shape of the mould.
- The custardA pouring custard — crème anglaise — is meant, not a baked one. Whole milk, egg yolks and sugar, cooked to the point where it coats a spoon, then chilled.
- Yield and costFive or six as given, which is fair; the paste is intensely sweet and small portions serve. At 10d for the whole dish, the pound of sugar was probably the dearest item on the list.
Gâteau here seems to mean something closer to "a moulded sweet dish" than a cake in the baking sense — Victorian English cookery borrowed the French word loosely. The technique itself is much older than the name: boiling fruit pulp with sugar until it sets solid is how apple, quince and medlar "cheeses" were preserved in English kitchens for centuries, the sugar and long reduction doing the keeping. The dish is really a demonstration of what happens when fruit pectin, acid from the lemon, and a high concentration of sugar are brought together and driven off, and a cook who understood that could apply it to whatever fruit the season offered. The named variety, the Nonpareil, was one of the well-regarded dessert apples of nineteenth-century England, and its specification alongside "any other nicely-flavoured apple" is characteristic of a book written for households that still bought fruit by the variety rather than by the bag.