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Apples in Pastry
Peel and core two pounds of apples. Put them into a pint of cold water with two pounds of loaf sugar, a little cinnamon, the juice of a small lemon, and a little butter. Boil to a pulp. Well oil a pie-dish: line it with good pastry about half an inch thick, and bake it in a quick oven. Place the apple pulp inside, pour custard over it, and ornament with alternate dots of red jelly and white of egg. Lift the pastry out of the dish before serving. Time to bake the pastry, twenty minutes. Sufficient for five persons. Probable cost, 2s. 6d.
A Victorian apple flan in disguise: the pastry is baked empty, filled with a heavily sweetened apple marmalade, and turned out of its dish before it reaches the table. Two things need attention before you start — the sugar and the empty pastry case.
- The sugar is the first thing to cutTwo pounds of sugar to two pounds of apples gives a preserve, not a filling; it will be cloyingly sweet and will set firm as it cools. Half a pound to three-quarters for two pounds of apples suits modern dessert apples, and less again if you use a sharp cooker.
- Loaf sugarSold as hard cones or lumps of refined cane sugar, broken up and crushed as needed. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct equivalent.
- A quick oven425-450F (220-230C). Right for pastry, and the case wants that heat to set before the butter melts out.
- Baking the case blindAn empty lined dish at that temperature will slump unless you line it with paper and fill it with beans or rice. Half an inch of pastry is also very thick by current practice — a scant quarter inch bakes through properly in the twenty minutes given.
- "Well oil a pie-dish"This means grease it thoroughly, with butter or lard, so the baked case releases whole at the end. A loose-bottomed flan tin does the same job with far less risk of a cracked shell.
- Boil to a pulpPeeled and cored apples in a pint of water with that much sugar take roughly 30-40 minutes of steady simmering, uncovered, to reduce to a thick pulp. Let it cool before it goes into the pastry or the case will soften.
- The custardThe recipe says only 'pour custard over it', so presumably a pouring custard made separately: egg yolks, sugar and milk stirred over low heat and never boiled (about 175F on a modern thermometer). Pour it over cold, shortly before serving, or the pastry goes limp.
- The egg-white dotsThe recipe says only 'white of egg', presumably whisked stiff and set against dots of a red jelly such as redcurrant. If raw white is not something you want on a dessert, use pasteurised whites or leave the whole decoration to the jelly.
- Yield and costFive servings, as stated. The 2s 6d is a Victorian retail figure; two pounds each of apples and sugar would have accounted for much of it.
Cassell's is describing what a later generation would call a flan: pastry baked in a dish, lifted out, and filled cold, as against the closed apple pie of English domestic cookery. Baked cases filled after the fact are associated with French patisserie, where the method allowed the pastry to stay crisp and the decoration to be arranged for effect -- here alternating dots of red jelly and white egg foam. The large quantity of sugar reflects both the taste of the period and the fall in sugar prices in the later nineteenth century; a pound of sugar to a pound of fruit was the standard preserving ratio.