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Apples, Compote of, Baked
Pare a dozen golden pippins, or any other finely-flavoured apples, and core them without breaking them. Place them in a deep dish with a cupful of water, a pound of sugar, and a few drops of the essence of vanilla or lemon. Cover the dish, and place it in a moderate oven until the apples are cooked through. Take them out, place them in a glass dish, and serve with custard or cream. Time to bake, three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for six persons.
A straightforward baked compote that depends almost entirely on choosing apples that hold their shape. The sugar quantity is Victorian and worth adjusting.
- Moderate ovenRead this as 350F (175C). At that heat, peeled whole apples take roughly 35-45 minutes; the recipe's three-quarters of an hour suits firm, small fruit and will overshoot with anything soft.
- Golden pippinsA small, tart, aromatic English dessert apple, now effectively out of commerce. Use a variety that keeps its shape: Braeburn, Pink Lady, Golden Delicious or a firm russet. Bramleys and other cooking apples will collapse into sauce.
- A pound of sugarThat is about 2 1/4 cups for a dozen apples, which produces a heavy syrup by modern taste. Half that amount gives a syrup that still coats the fruit; adjust to the tartness of the variety.
- Coring without breakingThe hinge of the dish. An apple corer pushed straight through from the stem end, or a melon baller worked from the base, leaves the walls intact so the apples emerge whole rather than split. Any breach and the syrup floods the cavity and the fruit slumps.
- Essence of vanilla or lemonVictorian "essence" is broadly what we call extract, though strength varied a good deal between makers. A few drops of vanilla extract or the pared zest of a lemon dropped into the water does the same work.
- A cupful of waterAn unstandardised measure, best read as somewhere between a half-pint and a US cup. It is there to dissolve the sugar into syrup and to keep the dish from scorching, not to poach the fruit; use a dish just large enough to hold the apples upright in one layer so the liquid does not spread thin.
- Covering and finishingCover tightly with a lid or foil so the apples steam rather than dry. Once the fruit is lifted out, the remaining liquid is usually thin -- reduce it in a pan for a few minutes and spoon it over the apples in the serving dish.
- Yield and costSix servings, as stated. The "1s." is one shilling, the kind of price note Cassell's gave so a housekeeper could cost a menu; it has no modern equivalent.
Compote in the French sense means whole or halved fruit cooked in syrup and served in its syrup, distinct from a marmalade or a puree, and the point of it was always that the fruit stayed recognisable. Cassell's places this among the baked variants rather than the stovetop ones, where the gentler, drier heat of the oven is kinder to fruit that has been cored and is liable to break up in a simmering pan. The golden pippin named here was one of the celebrated English dessert apples of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, small and sharply flavoured, and it appears constantly in period cookery books; the recipe nevertheless allows "or any other finely-flavoured apples". The heavy hand with sugar reflects a period in which refined sugar had become cheap enough for domestic use on this scale.