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Apples, Stewed, for Dessert
Wipe carefully six or eight large apples. Place them in a saucepan with half a pound of sugar, a few cloves, the rind and juice of a lemon, and a pint and a half of water. Let them simmer at the side of the fire until the apples are tender but not broken. Lift them out with a spoon, and lay them in a glass dish. Strain the juice, then let it boil a few minutes longer to reduce it. When almost cold, pour it over the apples. Invalids find apples stewed in this way much more tender than if simply baked. Time to stew, varying with the quality.
A whole-fruit compote poached in lemon-clove syrup, then dressed with the reduced poaching liquid. The only real difficulty is getting the apples soft without letting them collapse.
- The hinge: barely a simmer"At the side of the fire" means the cool edge of a range top, where the liquid only trembles. On a modern burner that is the lowest setting, lid off, with the surface shivering rather than bubbling. A rolling boil will burst the skins and you will be serving apple sauce in a glass dish.
- Imperial measuresA pint and a half means 30 fl oz, about 850 ml, not 24 fl oz. Half a pound of sugar is a generous cup, around 225 g. The syrup should come at least halfway up the apples; top up with hot water if your pan is wide.
- Choose a firm cooking appleThe recipe assumes a fruit that holds its shape under long heat. Bramley, Northern Spy, Granny Smith or a firm russet will work; a mealy eating apple falls apart in ten minutes. The recipe says only to wipe the apples, which implies they go in whole and unpeeled; if you prefer, core them from the stem end with an apple corer and leave the base intact so the syrup gets inside.
- Time to stewThe book declines to give one because "quality" varied so much. Expect 25 to 45 minutes for whole large apples. Test with a skewer at the thickest part; it should slide in with no resistance while the skin is still unbroken.
- ClovesFour to six whole cloves is plenty for eight apples. They are strong enough to dominate if you use a spoonful, and they will need to be strained out with the rest before the syrup is reduced.
- Reducing the syrupAfter lifting out the apples, boil the strained liquid until it is lightly syrupy. The recipe says only "a few minutes"; a wide pan may need longer. It thickens noticeably as it cools, so stop while it still looks slightly thin.
- Yield and servingSix to eight apples serves six to eight, one each, chilled, with cream or a thin custard. It can be made a day ahead; the fruit takes on more of the lemon and clove overnight.
Cassell's gives this as "Apples, Stewed, for Dessert," and the closing line — that stewing makes apples "more tender than if simply baked" — comes in an aside about invalids. Nineteenth-century sickroom cookery was a serious branch of the household manual, built on the belief that food for the ill should be soft, lightly flavoured and easy on the digestion, and stewed fruit was one of its staples. The technique itself is older than the invalid tradition: poaching whole apples in a spiced sugar syrup, with lemon and cloves, resembles the medieval and early modern habit of serving cooked fruit in wine or sweetened liquor at the close of a meal, and the glass dish here is the Victorian dessert service asserting itself. The instruction to pour the syrup over when almost cold matters for looks as much as for taste — a warm syrup runs off, a cooled one clings and glazes.