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Apples (baked) for Children
Take a large earthen jar, and fill it to within three inches of the top with well-wiped apples of any sort in the house. Neither peel them nor remove the stalks. Pour over them, so as to cover them completely, a mixture of treacle or brown sugar and water. If the apples are windfalls, you may allow a little extra sweetening. Put with them some pieces of orange or lemon-peel, and a few cloves. Cover the jar; leave it for three or four hours in a cool oven. If the oven is too hot, the liquid will boil over or evaporate, and the apples be dried up or burnt. Probable cost, 1d. each. Allow one or two for each person.
A slow-baked jar of whole apples in sweetened liquid, closer to a preserve than a dessert. The whole thing hinges on keeping the oven low enough that the syrup never boils.
- "A cool oven"A slack oven, the residual heat of a range after the day's cooking; in modern terms something in the region of 250-275F. At that sort of heat three to four hours will soften the apples inside their skins without the liquid reducing away.
- The vesselAn earthen jar is a deep earthenware crock, covered in some fashion. A deep casserole or Dutch oven with a tight lid works; foil under the lid helps if it does not seal well. Depth matters, since the apples must stay covered by the liquid.
- TreacleIn this period the word covered both dark and lighter cane syrups, though the dark, slightly bitter sort is the likelier reading; unsulphured molasses is the closest substitute. Golden syrup gives a milder, sweeter result. Brown sugar and water, the stated alternative, gives a cleaner one.
- How much syrupNo quantity is given because the jar dictates it. Expect roughly equal volumes of water to fill the gaps, sweetened to taste before pouring; something like a cup of treacle or brown sugar per quart of water is a reasonable starting point for eating apples.
- WindfallsFallen apples are bruised and often sour, which is presumably why extra sweetening is allowed. Cut away any brown or fermented flesh first, whatever the original says about not peeling.
- Skins and stalksThe recipe leaves both on, which saves labour; the skin also helps hold each apple together through hours of heat.
- Peel and clovesUse unwaxed citrus, and pare the peel thinly to avoid the bitter pith. Cloves are potent in a long bake; four or five for a full jar is plenty.
- Yield and servingOne or two apples per person, warm or cold, with the syrup spooned over. The fruit keeps a few days to a week refrigerated in its liquid.
Baked apples in a covered crock belong to the economy of the coal or wood range, where a slackening oven went on giving useful heat for hours after the roast came out; nothing was wasted, least of all fuel. The reference to windfalls and to a probable cost of a penny each places this among the cheap nursery dishes of the Victorian household. The warning about too hot an oven is the practical heart of it, and reflects a period when cooks judged heat by hand and experience rather than a dial.