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Apples, Preserved
Pare, core, and chop small three pounds of good cooking apples. Have ready some thick boiling syrup, made of three pounds of sugar and a pint of water. Throw in the apples, with the chopped rind of three lemons and one ounce of whole ginger. Let it simmer gently until the apples look clear. Time to simmer, about half an hour. Probable cost, 2s. 3d. Sufficient for half a dozen jars of moderate size.
A straightforward high-sugar apple preserve, closer to a chunky conserve than a jelly. The recipe assumes you know how to fill and seal jars, so that is where most of the guidance is needed.
- The pint is imperialCassell's pint is 20 fl oz (about 570 ml), so use a scant 2 1/2 US cups of water to 3 lb of sugar. Dissolve the sugar fully over low heat before it comes to a boil, or the syrup will crystallise on the pan sides.
- "Thick boiling syrup"Boil the sugar and water until it is visibly syrupy and coats a spoon before the apples go in. The apples then cook in syrup rather than water, which is what keeps the pieces intact instead of collapsing to sauce.
- Apple choice"Good cooking apples" in an English book of this period points to a sharp, firm, high-pectin cooker such as Bramley. A firm modern equivalent is Granny Smith; sweet eating apples such as Gala will go mushy and taste flat against this much sugar.
- The hinge: cook until clearThe half hour is nominal. What matters is that the apple pieces turn translucent, which signals the syrup has penetrated the fruit and will preserve it. Pulling the pan off early leaves opaque, watery chunks that ferment in the jar.
- Lemon rind"Chopped rind" means the coloured zest only, pared thin and cut fine. Take unwaxed lemons, or scrub them, and leave the white pith behind since it turns bitter through long simmering.
- Whole gingerOne ounce of dried whole ginger root, lightly bruised. Tie it in muslin so it can be lifted out before potting, and do not substitute ground ginger, which will cloud the syrup and dominate.
- Filling and keepingLadle into hot sterilised jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace, and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes for shelf storage. The Victorian alternative was a paper or waxed cover and a cool larder; without processing, treat it as a refrigerator preserve and use within a month.
- Yield and cost"Half a dozen jars of moderate size" implies jars of about a pound each, given 6 lb of fruit and sugar before evaporation. The 2s 3d is Victorian money, and sugar was probably the largest single expense in the pan.
Preserves of this kind belong to the Victorian habit of turning a glut into something that would keep through the winter, and apples were among the cheapest raw materials for it in an English household with a tree or an orchard nearby. The pound-for-pound ratio of sugar to fruit is not decoration but the preserving mechanism itself: enough dissolved sugar binds the available water and leaves nothing for moulds and yeasts to live on, a principle cooks applied long before anyone described it in those terms. The lemon and ginger flavouring reflects how thoroughly cheap imported sugar, citrus and dried spice had entered ordinary British kitchens by the later nineteenth century, when Cassell's was compiled as a household reference rather than a chef's book. Cassell's habit of quoting a "probable cost" for every entry is a reminder of its intended reader, a mistress of a modest house budgeting by the shilling.